Synergy: Sharing your keyboard and mouse

[wraith808]

I would love one of these that doesnt need one screen per computer. After all I have screens that can have more than one input, so it should be possible in some way...

As things stand I tend to use either a kvm or remote admin, but kvms are rarely seamless, and remote admin cant handle games...

I almost bought multiplicity a few times but the clutter of multiple screens just stopped me

-iphigenie (October 25, 2007, 08:51 AM)

A KVM seems like it would be a better solution for you... or Remote Desktop or VNC.  They serve different purposes.  I want to control a complete computer as a totally separate computer at the same time- you can't two box MMOs if the screen is constantly switching.  But on my server, I want to access it remotely, so I use remote desktop for that, and don't connect a monitor.  In other words, IMO, you're barking up the wrong tree- there's already software for what you want- this just isn't it.

[iphigenie]

True

I'm more likely to be playing 2 games in parallel than the same game twice...

[wraith808]

Even with two games in parallel (I do that too), unless they're both turn based, it's better to have two monitors- the flip a KVM gives you, or the reduction in performance from Remote Desktop or VNC will likely make one of the games suffer in my experience.

[tinjaw]

I still haven't taken the plunge yet. I don't have the time to mess with all this right now. However, I did spot another application today that does the same thing. I don't know if it is any good or not.

Input Director
[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

[Ralf Maximus]

I'm still trying to puzzle out this Input Director feature:

Mirror input mode - Mouse and keyboard input is simultaneously sent to all systems

Um... what?  Clearly somebody has a need for this else it wouldn't have got coded.  But again... what?

[justice]

If you need to do a multi pc installation routine for example preparing a classroom full of computers maybe this would come in handy?

[kartal]

Input Director ROCKS. It is easier to use and has seamless integration. Crazy GOOD. I mean it is beyond best

http://www.inputdirector.com/

I still haven't taken the plunge yet. I don't have the time to mess with all this right now. However, I did spot another application today that does the same thing. I don't know if it is any good or not.

Input Director (see attachment in previous post)

-tinjaw (November 22, 2007, 07:38 AM)

[Darwin]

Yeah, couldn't agree more, Kartal. I just spent 20 minutes trying to get Synergy to work (forgot about the Xhirl Synergy Wizard) and gave up and installed Input Director instead. I had everything configured and running within in seconds (seriously!). I AM intrigued by Synergy's ability to share keyboard and mouse across platform as I also have Linux and OSX machines on my network (and desk) and by Multiplicity's ability to copy and move files and folders... If all of this came together in one app I'd be very happy indeed!

[Gothi[c]]

I use synergy here between 4 computers. 2 running FreeBSD and 2 running Gentoo... works wonderfully well. I didn't find it hard to set up at all. The configuration is very straightforward, you just tell it which screen is to the left/right of which.

[Darwin]

Yeah - that's where the wizard would have come in for me  I'm just downloading a trial of MaxiVista - if it does all that it says it will, it sounds just what I'm looking for (but will stick with Input Director or Synergy otherwise).

[Darwin]

Couldn't get MaxiVista to work (I was trying to install it under Vista and I could not get the VGA driver to install - tried run as admin, etc.). However, used the Xhirl Synergy Wizard to set up Synergy and... WOW! It's slightly smoother than Input Director and features like sharing my mouse and keyboard with non-Windows based machines AND sharing clipboard contents makes it a winner in my books. I didn`t check the footprint of Input Director, but Synergy`s footprint is ridiculously low (5MB under Vista, 6 under XP Pro).

[autryld]

Input Director ROCKS. It is easier to use and has seamless integration. Crazy GOOD. I mean it is beyond best

http://www.inputdirector.com/

-kartal (March 16, 2008, 02:15 AM)

I have used both Synergy and Input Director. ID is slicker and MUCH easier to set up than Synergy. Once the configuration for Synergy is complete, it's great, too. The screen edge visual in ID is somewhat distracting, but that can be eliminated. The major difference I notice is that ID seems to be a tad jerky as the two PCs I use are not on the same subnet. The laptop is VPN/wireless and and the desktop is on a wired network. Synergy shows some jerkiness as well, but not as pronounced. Ease of use goes to ID, but Synergy has better throughput. Switching to a wireless network that did not require me to use VPN did not significantly improve Synergy or ID. The latency was still apparent. Since most folks will not use two PCs connected in the same fashion, either program should do the job well.

I plan to continue to use Synergy since at home I have a Mac, a PC (or two) and Linux. But although Synergy can handle three screens, no way am I going to put three displays on my desk.

[Darwin]

I like Synergy but... I find that it simply stops working randomly over my wireless home network. All three computers (XP, Vista, Tiger) remain connected to the network and retain internet access but I'll have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the mouse and keyboard to share again. To be honest this is worst between XP and Vista and rarely happens with the Mac. I suspect that is an issue with networking XP and Vista as I also have a difficult time sharing folders between the two and have read numerous posts on the net about issues related to this...

[Darwin]

Interesting... I moved from WAP-PSK TKIP encryption to WAP2-PSK AES on my home network and Synergy is still connected after over 8 hours and numerous bouts of the computers going into standby 

May just be a coincidence, but it's never been this stable 

[Darwin]

Synergy is great, but it craps out for unknown reasons every so often... Can't get a functioning configuration back at the moment, so am trying Input Director again. Problem I am having with Input Director is that anytime I try to use the mousewheel in the slave, the mouse jumps back to the master and IT starts scrolling I also find that the mouse cursor will just randomly disappear (completely - absent from both Slave and Master systems), even though the keyboard still works as expected on whatever system had focus before the cursor disappeared. Eventually, it comes back, but it's damned annoying. Suspect a reboot will fix it, but then I expect that a reboot will revive Synergy...

[cmpm]

When you first install Synergy, be sure to do the 'test' part first which will trigger your firewall to open up and let you allow it to work. After adding and configuring your computers, first.

'Test' instead of 'Start' first, then you can set to start and set the option to start with the computer or logon.

[Darwin]

Thanks for the tip, cmpm. I was trying that yesterday but no joy. I'm going to reboot both computers and try again...

One general note: I've taken to using the Synergy GUI to configure my primary computer and Xhirl for the secondary ones. Has the bonus of allowing me to more precisely configure the placement of the various computers, allows me to share to more than two other computers, and has the test feature mentioned above 

[mateek]

Has anyone had any experience trying to use both Synergy and InputDirector?

FYI, a new GUI to Synergy called QuickSynergy looks very promising.  I havn't been able to connect my Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 yet.  I think my syntax 192.168.0.197:1234 in QS isn't being accepted as enough of an override to Synergy's install default on a different port.  When I get this sorted I'll try and post my results.

[Gothi[c]]

Also, don't forget that you should now probably use synergy+ instead of plain old synergy.
http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/

It's a fork so development could continue since the original synergy seems to have not been updated in a long time.
All new features and bug features go into synergy+ ...

Synergy+ is a maintenance fork for implementing bug fixes to the original Synergy by Chris Schoeneman, which hasn't any source updates or new releases since 2006 (as of writing this). So far we've implemented many significant bug fixes such as support for Windows services on Vista and Windows 7, and a brand new GUI (based on QSynergy).