Kleene Code

27/05/2007 In Tools by Carly Lyddiard

I decided to get Synergy working this morning - it’s a little piece of Open Source sofware that allows you to share a mouse and keyboard across multiple machines, even if they have different operating systems.

I have my Macbook Pro which can run Windows on Parallels as needed, but for heavier Windows applications that I use once in a while� I install them on my PC as I don’t want to fill up my nice shiny laptop. What normally happens then is I end up at my desk with my PC and my laptop, switching between the two keyboards a fair bit.

Well, that annoyance is behind me now as Synergy has allowed me to use the same mouse and keyboard across both machines without any special hardware.

It was surprisingly easy to set up. Install on both machines, set up one as the server (in my case the Windows machine), configure the client and away you go.

The only thing that caught me out was that while the Windows machine could resolve the Mac’s name, the Mac can only contact the Windows machine by IP (there may be a way to make it resolve, but I am still learning the ins and outs of the Mac world - comment if you can point me in the right direction). All that means is that when I start the client on the Mac, I supply the server’s IP address rather than its name. I also added that IP as an alias in the client’s config but I suspect that was not necessary.

You can’t move windows or files between the two machines, but you do have a shared simple clipboard (text and images I believe - I have not yet tested the latter). You can hook up multiple machines (providing they are network contactable) and you have complete control over the relationships between the screens (eg Screen1 is left of Screen2, which is above Screen3). Awethome, wot?

Oh, linky to Buzzword Bingo if any of you were wondering what it was.