Software used to be called Synergy, but that went commercial, so there's a fork called barrier. https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
> We will also have our eye on Wayland when the time comes.
Every time I've inquired about $simple_x11_thing for Wayland I find smells like this one. Does Barrier work under Wayland, or not?
Install Barrier on both Mac and Linux, get an extra monitor, and then you can seamlessly work on both system at once as if it's a single computer with multiple monitors. Don't even need to press that switch button on your keyboard and mouse.
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
the general concept is you could have 2, 3, 4 or more individual desktop PCs at one desk, each connected to their own displays, and one keyboard and one mouse. The keyboard and mouse are on the primary workstation, you can roll the mouse off the edge of one screen and onto another.
The secondary and tertiary workstation PCs have no keyboard/mouse i/o plugged into them, just power, ethernet and display.
I had informed the client that I will be disposing of them when I’m back if they don’t handle it and that any and all third party liability well fall on the direct supervisor if he can’t organize the transfer.
Needlessly to say even me connecting them directly to the courier was not enough.
My guess is that the OP depends on the money otherwise he wouldn’t be asking for help. So either but a cheap laptop and then control it with barrier[1] from your main driver and don’t ask(because whatever you ask they will probably say no). Or let them ship theirs to you, but I’m willing to bet that it be worse than whatever second machine you get.
In the meantime I would suggest you look for a new client because judging from experience there is a lot more pain to come. I didn’t do it in time and ended up paying dearly for my lack of initiative on that front.
Is the key feature clipboard sharing? Otherwise I don't know why I wouldn't redirect events with zero additional software. As-is, I press both ctrl keys and my keyboard and mouse switch to the virtual machine. The big nuisance is that I need to switch monitor inputs. That appears to be something I can automate, but simply haven't yet.
8x4k 27" screens in portrait mode plus TV. I connected laptop and two desktops with Barrier, so all share single mouse, keyboard and clipboard.
I found it better to work on multiple machines simultaneously. Background tasks do not slow it down. And connecting 9 displays to single machine is tricky. It is cheap junk, but looks like power plant control center. And productivity gain is there.
But +1 for the recommendation, so easy to set up and it works so well it feels like magic when using for first time.
Also, Synergy is not free anymore. I believe there is a recent free fork-- Barrier I believe?
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
I like the author's idea about using SecureCRT and ssh localhost. There are so many good Windows terminal options available now though with WSL being so prominent, that this option is certainly not something you should need to have to do (eg, Alacritty etc makes for a beautiful Powershell experience)
Total Commander is certainly amazing, and believe stays fully functional forever after an initial startup nag, much like WinRAR.
Speaking of WinRAR, I still use it, partly for nostalgia sake, and partly because it has a feature that 7zip does not have-- and that is to select a bunch of archives, and to extract each one and then delete the archive. This is very handy if you don't have a lot of extra drive space past what the archives are using (haven't found a way to make 7z do this even via CLI options; although I'm sure you could script it with power/cmd shell script, but 7z does not appear to have a builtin switch for that exact functionality of deleting the archive after extraction).
Also, perhaps this original list is (relatively) old, even though it appears to have been updated 3 weeks ago. That doesn't diminish any of the tools, however certain items may be deprecated, such as HijackThis, which appears to have gotten eaten up by Trend Micro. Looks like one can find it at oldversion.com, however, it would be inadvisable to use given the unlikelihood of the database being updated/current.
sort of an inverse KVM. and without the ridiculous cost/licensing issues of the official synergy.
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
I actually clicked on this thread for the purpose of commenting that you could do cool things with some combination of this, using spare screen/tablet devices, and Barrier. But you beat me to mentioning the concept.
I have moved over though to using Barrier, a synergy-core fork. You get ssl crypto for free, and it fixes some simple but long standing bugs that really annoyed me. Have only used on Mac + Linux for now.
High-end KVMs get around this with virtual usb devices. Instead of switching the actual USB devices between computers A and B, they instead create a separate virtual USB device for each computer that always stays connected to each computer and is never switched. When you push the button on the KVM, you are not actually switching between computers, the KVM reads the USB input from the device and then recreates it on the appropriate virtual usb output device.
These KVMs are pretty costly. There are some complicated DIY solutions involving arduinos, but a software "KVM" (really just the KM, no V) like https://github.com/debauchee/barrier in most situations works just as well, and if the computers are connected via wired ethernet, is rock-solid and adds no perceptible latency.
For keyboard/mouse I use Barrier ( https://github.com/debauchee/barrier ) which works great for sharing keyboard/mouse between my laptop and desktop.
Logitech makes mice and keyboards that can pair with multiple bluetooth devices and are switch selectable on the keyboard.
If your willing to do DIY, there are several KVM projects based around the raspberry pi which could be made to funnel the bluetooth as well. I would start at https://hackaday.com/tag/kvm/
Here are a few more ideas: https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/d2wx04/what_do_i_...
This might help http://handheldsci.com/kb/ as bluetooth to usb which then plugs into kvm
synergy or barrier could provide a software solution
I worked for Symless for 2 years and I can tell you first hand that the owner had little interest in fixing or improving the core functionality, the code for which has remained largely unchanged for 12-15 years.
Most of the input bugs in the software are a decade old, and unless a community patch comes along that can be merged, the owner only has interest in keeping it working on new OS versions, and tarting up the UI/UX to support Symless as a lifestyle business.
In the 2 years since I left I've seen exactly 3 bugfix releases, one of which broke TLS, and none of which seemed to contain any significant original work.
Supposedly Synergy 3 is in the works, after Synergy 2 (which I worked on) was scrapped, but this will almost certainly only be a proprietary Electron UI for the FOSS CLI instead of a Qt/QML UI for the FOSS CLI (as v2 was).
Major versions of Input Director (v2.0) and ShareMouse (v5.0) have been announced in the last few months, and it looks like significant work has taken place on both projects. Both of these products need better marketing.
Unfortunately none of the alternatives to Barrier/Synergy seem to want to support Linux, which remains its moat. The days for that are numbered due to Wayland though (Synergy uses the X11 XTest extension to inject input).
[0] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
It works surprisingly well, no noticeable lag even when gaming.
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
SSL & other important features