Synergy Software KVM

I’ve been using Synergy at work for a few months now. I have two computers and limited desk space, so having 2 keyboards, and two mice was too much clutter for me. Synergy was the perfect solution.

It’s a software KVM, so you still need the second display, but I actually prefer it that way. The way it works is by TCP/IP. You run a server on one machine, and clients on all the others (you can have any number of machines linked together). The server holds information about the position of all the displays so that the mouse moves off one screen and onto the next just as it would if you were using dual displays.

Even better is the clipboard support. If I cut from one system, I can paste in another. The only thing I can’t do is drag windows between computers, which is easy to forget if you’re used to using multi-display systems.

The best thing though, is that Synergy is platform independent. You can use it on Windows, OS X, or Linux. You can configure Synergy to handle any difference there may be with keyboard support, and the clipboard works fine between platforms as well.

One more thing…it’s open source.