Joe’s Tech

Generally, synergy is the phenomenon of “the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.” In other words, 1+1=3.

On my desk, I’m using a piece of software called Synergy to make 1+1=1.  Irony is delicious, and occasionally productive, too.

Synergy is what’s known as a ’soft kvm’.  It allows two (or more) networked computers to share a keyboard and mouse, while keeping separate monitors, and involves no extra hardware.  Hardware KVMs have been around for decades, and are used extensively everywhere from people’s desks to enterprise-level data centers.  they allow people to toggle, using hardware, between several computers with just one keyboard, mouse, and monitor.  I have two fairly large ones in my server room.  If I didn’t, I’d have to manually plug my monitor, keyboard and mouse into each server I want to manage locally.

Synergy does something else for me.  If you look at my desk, you see, from left to right, a printer, possibly a stack of paper relating to whatever I’m working on that day, two monitors, a keyboard and mouse coming out from between the two, speakers on either side, and a phone near the edge.  If you look closely at the monitors, you notice something else:  they’re running different operating systems.

That’s all fairly common for an IT type’s office.  Nothing out of the ordinary, until I start moving my mouse between monitors.  That’s right.  I’ll move my mouse off the right hand monitor, and it’ll go onto the left.  Then I’ll start typing over there, maybe copy something onto my clipboard, and then move it back and paste the data onto the other machine.

Wait, what?.  Yes: synergy lets me move keyboard, mouse, and clipboard seamlessly between computers, even if they use different operating systems.

That is the ultimate convenience when you use multiple computers.  it’s more than worth a few problems I have to put up with:

• Synergy can be configured to autostart, but I haven’t bothered to figure it out correctly yet;
• By default, the software won’t move the mouse to another screen if you have scroll lock on. (that can get confusing when your hardware KM also uses scroll lock to toggle)
• If a computer other than the host freezes, Synergy can’t respond, and you’ll have to use another mouse and keyboard on it. (I get around this with a hardware KVM.  That also lets me do some cool dual-monitor tricks.)

Synergy also, by default, is not secure in the least.  It’s designed to be run on trusted networks.  Otherwise, you can use OpenSSH and tunnel all your synergy traffic through that.

Also, synergy is not for your everyday user.  If things get confusing, they get confusing fast, and you have to know what you’re doing to troubleshoot.  If you think you’re up to it, try it.  I bet you’ll like it.