Synergy

One of my coworkers is a Mac dude. He has an iMac and a Powerbook on his desk, and has them hooked up to allow his iMac's mouse/keyboard to control both boxes, (as they sit side by side). I was suitably impressed by this, but he then informed me that the software he uses is Open Source, and cross platform.

So I went to take a look. It's called synergy, and can be found on SourceForge. I pulled down the RPMs and installed it on my two work machines. My desktop box already has two monitors, so getting that setup right was a (very) minor nuisance, but once I figured that out, I now have a three-monitor desktop.

What's especially slick is being able to cut-n-paste between the two boxen. I highlight text on my laptop, and it pastes into apps running on my desktop box. Very nice. Especially as I'm not too fond of my laptop's keyboard. (Actually, I just don't like that it only has one Ctrl key, and yeah, a full numeric keypad is nice, too.)

So I'm now running Eclipse over X onto my desktop box, and I can use all three screens while developing, yet still have my whole dev env on my laptop, to take with on the road.

Way slick. Thanks, coworker-dude, and thanks, synergy.