I saw a piece on Planet Ubuntu about an app that lets you use one keyboard and mouse on two computers on the same network. QuickSynergy. It is a breeze to set up and works like a charm.

Many times I’m sitting at my desk running both my desktop box and my laptop. When I’m working on the UWN, it’s a must almost for me. Having to change from my desktop keyboard and mouse to the laptops involves leaning forward, and that causes back and shoulder pain after about 30 mins. or so. With QuickSynergy, this is eliminated.

Quicksynergy is in the Ubuntu repos. Just install it on both machines. Once installed open it from Applications>Accessories>Quicksynergy on the main box from which you’ll be using the mouse and keyboard. This will be the main QuickSynergy server. In the Share Tab, choose where the second machines screen sits in relation to the main servers screen. Click on the appropriate box and enter the secondary machines host name. This tells QuickSynergy where the mouse cursor will exit the main screen to the secondary screen.. Then click the Execute button at the bottom.

Now go to the secondary machine and launch QuickSynergy as above, but instead of entering anything in the Share Tab, click on the Use Tab. Enter the IP address of the main machine and hit execute. You should now be able to use the main machines mouse and keyboard to work on the secondary machines by moving the mouse off the main screen in the direction you set up in the share tab of the first machine.

I am in fact using my desktops mouse and keyboard right now on my laptop to type this blog up. I must say this app is going to save not only time, but my back and shoulders as well. Credit of this discovery goes to Martin Meredith here: http://www.sourceguru.net/archives/203 WOW, I just copied a link from my main desktop in firefox and pasted it here. This is great!! Hope you folks find this as handy as I have so far.

This will work on a Windows box too, but you need Synergy not QuickSynergy on the Windows machine.

Anonymous