The title of this post is probably not at all unique. After all, by using Debian and Kubuntu I've managed to avoid egregious Microsoft taxes, and everything I use except my graphics card driver is completely open source. However, this seemed to be an interesting case, because I didn't use open source to replace proprietary software. I used it to replace hardware.

The Problem

I have two systems at my desk, a Windows sandbox, and my dual monitor Linux setup, which I use as my main computer. Now, I like my desk space, and I can never get enough of it, so I use the builtin keyboard tray for my main system, and I really don't like the fact that I had an extra keyboard on my desk. Before, when the second box was a Linux box, I used x2x, which I liked. However, I thought maybe a USB KVM switch would be the best bet here. So I went over to my local overpriced Best Buy and purchased a KVM USB for $70+ It was a disaster. First of all, it had two USB ports, but they weren't true USB ports. One was made specifically for the keyboard, and one was specifically for the mouse. I use a Mac keyboard and Mighty Mouse, and the Mighty Mouse's USB cable is intended to be plugged into the keyboard's USB ports. So it was difficult to get everything squared away with it. Then, I noticed that if I left my system idle for 3 hours or so, I'd have to unplug my keyboard and plug it back in before I could use it, although the mouse worked fine.

An Open Source Solution to Every Problem

I first found a link to x2vnc, which I installed, and could tell it was trying to work, but it didn't work well with my dual screen setup. I would move my mouse to where it should start sending the mouse events to the Windows computer, and I would just see the mouse flicker on the main desktop. This wasn't something I wanted...

Enter Synergy, which I found to be very intuitive. I downloaded the .exe binary for my Windows system, and found synergy was already in my Ubuntu apt repositories, so I installed it from apt on my linux system. I also installed a package called 'quicksynergy' containted a binary by the same name. Using quicksynergy, I quickly debugged any problems. For instance, the client sends a "screen name" to the server, and the server listens for that screen name, not necessarily the hostname or IP address (although the hostname is the default name). Then, I needed to jump through some hoops to get the server to run automatically on startup, all of which are caused by kdm. However, it was pretty simple, and before I knew it, I could drag my mouse across 3 monitors and 2 operating systems. Impressive.

Needless to say, I'm taking the USB KVM back to Best Buy, and I'm gonna give them the technical details on why their product sucks.