Two Computers - Two Monitors - One Keyboard!

Any serious technophile loves monitors.  I personally have a monitor fetish - 4 screens in all.  You can just do so much more with more monitors!

Well, let’s take that one step further…  What about multiple workstations?

Right now, I am running Ubuntu Desktop with the server kernel to accomodate all 8 gigs of RAM.  But as you know, Adobe doesn’t like Linux.  Neither does Camtasia - the software I do the screen recordings in.

An obvious solution is to dual-boot between Ubuntu and Vista, and I do.  But it takes so long for Windows to start up!

So the answer is to run two workstations - side by side.  One monitor on the Vista machine, three monitors on Ubuntu.

This is achieved using a software package called Synergy.  Synergy allows two or more machines to share the same keyboard and mouse.  So when I move my cursor off of the Ubuntu machine, it will show up on the Vista PC!

Synergy has all sorts of documentation that accompanies it.  And the windows setup is easy.  But the most useful resource I found for Ubuntu was this How-To…

Below, you’ll see a picture I found of the most amazing desktop I have ever seen.  It’s 6 total monitors with two laptops, all sharing one keyboard and mouse!  Simply nuts..

This was done using Synergy…

Check out his full setup at StefanDidak.com

If you have any experience putting Synergy to use, please share!