Slick Tool

[Kevin Brown]

Richard Wilson wrote:
> All,
> 
> In a recent mailing from Sourceforge I came across a tool that I'd never
> heard of, in spite of it being number 15 in their list of most popular
> downloads.  I read the little blurb about it, tried it out and it's
> going to be a real help to me so I thought I'd pass it along.
> 
> The tool is called synergy and it allows you to share a keyboard and
> mouse on one system (the server) with others (the clients) --
> essentially its a dynamic KM (Keyboard and Mouse) switch (each system
> needs to have its own Video).  Switching is done by moving your mouse
> off one screen and onto the other.  The server and clients can be Unix,
> Linux, Mac OSX and most flavors of Windows (even Win 95 is supported!).
> 
> In my setup I have my server running FC4 and my client running XP (I
> have to put up with Windoze for work compatability...) but being able to
> use the same keyboard and mouse without a hardware switch is nice.  The
> tool also supports some mouse driven cut and paste operations, which
> I've already found to be very useful.
> 
> This is perhaps a tool that could be used to teach some Windows bigots
> that Open Source software is a good thing -- the server and client(s)
> can all be Windows...
> 
> Maybe this is old hat to you -- I'd never heard of it before and I
> figured that others on this list might find it useful.  And it's slick
> moving the mouse off of a Linux desktop into XP and back as needed.

Nice to see a reminder that this exists.  I recall /. had a story about 
it some time ago (though I can't seem to find it now).  My system setup 
doesn't lend itself well to something like this since I would need 
either the mouse or keyboard usable on two different systems at the same 
time (gaming while looking up information online is one example).  I 
should probably point this one out to some of those in the lab that have 
multiple systems to work on.