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Synergy: Multi-Monitor, Multi-Platform Goodness

Filed under “Software”
by Adam at 3:34 PM on September 25, 2004

7 Comments

An open source software project called Synergy allows users to share a keyboard, mouse, and clipboard seamlessly and simultaneously between multiple displays from different computers running different operating systems.

Someone testing the program has posted videos of the see-it-to-believe-it results. Plus, check out this five-monitor setup with a panoramic desktop background image across them all.

(brainscat and random($foo) via Photo Matt and Photo Matt)

Adam is a web developer and graphic designer who lives and works in south-central Kansas. He likes to speak his mind, both here and in his business blog. He only rarely writes about himself in the third person, honest. If you’d like to work with Adam, drop him a line.

7 Comments »

  1. Isn’t open source amazing? :)

    Comment by Matt — September 25, 2004 @ 8:08 pm

  2. It sure is. As a matter of fact, just last night I installed Mandrake Linux 10.1 alongside Windows XP on my computer without a hitch. Between the performance improvements in GNOME’s Nautilus file browser and the new Reiser4 file system, Linux is now (finally!) much more responsive for me than Windows XP.

    Mandrake’s distro has gained the ability to safely read from and write to NTFS partitions (so I’ve heard… not tested yet), and some enterprising .Net programmer has released a tool that can read/write ReiserFS volumes from Windows. Not only that, but some OSS programmers appear to have ported Linux to Windows as a Win32 executable (this is my limited understanding, since they claim that it doesn’t use VMware-style virtualization). The CoLinux web site has some truly impressive screenshots.

    Microsoft does a lot of talking about innovation, but the open source arena is where it’s really happening. By the time Longhorn finally comes out, I think Linux may very well have surpassed it in both features and UI.

    Comment by Adam M. — September 27, 2004 @ 12:30 pm

  3. An update on the above:

    Mandrake Linux cannot, as of right now, write to NTFS partitions. The easiest way to share files between Windows XP and Linux continues to be having a FAT32 partition that can act as a go-between. There is a project — NTFS-Linux — devoted to getting native support for the Windows filesystem into the Linux kernel, but the web site is pretty stale and development seems to be at a crawl. Meanwhile, a programmer named Jan Kratochvil has come up with a way to use Windows’ own filesystem drivers to talk to NTFS partitions from within Linux. The project, called Captive NTFS, is worth a look for people who need this functionality.

    YAReG, the ReiserFS tool for Windows mentioned in my earlier comment, cannot write to Reiser volumes like I originally thought. It can only read from them and write to Windows partitions.

    I’ve had great difficulty getting my Canon i350 printer working under Linux. It’s not supported by current Linux printing architectures, but the manufacturer does seem to offer some limited Linux support in the form of i-series drivers available for download from the New Zealand and Japanese Canon web sites. I haven’t tried these yet, but have high hopes. Canon’s failure to release these drivers in the US is inexplicable, but probably has to do with the great strides Linux is making in other countries compared to here. Thanks are due to Jose and Tassos from the LinuxPrinting.org Canon forum for this find. The Japanese drivers have moved from the original location given in Jose’s message. You can now find them at the URL given in my follow-up message to the same forum. More info is also available in this message. You can translate the Japanese pages into English with AltaVista’s Babel Fish translator.

    I’ll continue to post about my ongoing Linux experiment elsewhere on this blog.

    Comment by Adam M. — October 6, 2004 @ 10:54 am

  4. Synergy is cool.

    But there is another software which is even more amazing. www.Maxivista.com let you use any laptop as an extra screen of another PC.

    Unfortunately not open source but definitely worth a

    Michael

    Comment by Michael — November 10, 2004 @ 8:06 am

  5. should make the RIAA and MPAA shudder. It can hold 25 DVDs within the size of a postage stamp. This thing, MaxiVista, reminds me of an open source program… but I cannot remember the name! Oh wait, yes I can, Synergy ! They let you use one mouse and keyboard to seamlessly work on multiple computers and their respective displays. It’s great if you have multiple monitors and multiple computers. Not so useful if you need a KVM to accomodate multiple computers and a

    Pingback by boredumb — March 28, 2005 @ 4:45 pm

  6. […] Synergy Monitor - Open Source Bin ich drauf gestossen, durch einen Kumpel, mehrere Rechner im LAN über ein und die gleiche Tastatur + Mouse bedienen, anstatt über RemoteDesktop oder sowas… Ist nice. http://www.adammessinger.com/2004/09…nergy-software Vielleicht kann es ja der ein oder andere gebrauchen. Gruß […]

    Pingback by Synergy Monitor - Open Source - ForumBase — February 7, 2006 @ 9:33 am

  7. You can do this with xdmx on linux:
    http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-mltihed/

    Comment by chuck please — April 20, 2006 @ 1:16 pm

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