Synergy

Synergy is a great piece of software. It allows you to, and I quote, “easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware”. Yes, your could use Linux, Windows or Mac OS. I’m only using it between to Ubuntu machines, so share your eXPerience if your using Linux and Windows for example.

Check here a little animation.

After you install and setup Synergy you only need to move your mouse to the right, left, up or down of your monitor (according to your setup) and your automatically gain control of the other machine. Now your mouse and keyboard will work there. To return to the main machine do the opposite.

This means that if your are using Synergy between your desktop and laptop, and the laptop is to the right of your desktop monitor, you’d move your mouse to the right to gain control of the laptop and to the left, in the laptop, to gain control of your desktop.

Install

• Go to Applications > Add/Remove and look for synergy
• Install QuickSynergy (a GUI for Synergy)

Setup

Here’s how I’ve setup my desktop and laptop:

• Desktop
  • Go to Applications > Accessories > QuickSynergy
  • In the Share tab write your laptop hostname (not the IP) in the position of your choice (depending if your laptop is at your right or left for instance).
  • You can find your laptop hostname running the following in your laptop

  hostname

  • Don’t write anything in the Use tab and leave unchecked the option in the Settings tab
  • Click Start
• Laptop
  • Go to Applications > Accessories > QuickSynergy
  • In the Use tab write your desktop IP (ex: 100.000.1.1)
  • Don’t write anything in the Share tab and leave unchecked the option in the Settings tab

I’ve added an Application Launcher to the Panel in my laptop with the following (100.000.1.1 is the desktop IP):

synergyc 100.000.1.1

This way, when I turn on my laptop I only need one mouse click to start using Synergy goodness.

Firewall

If your using a firewall you need to open the tcp port 24800 in the server machine (in my case the desktop).

I’m using ufw, so I did in my desktop machine (100.000.1.2 is the laptop IP):

sudo ufw allow proto tcp from 100.000.1.2 to any port 24800

Further reading

• Synergy
• Where I discovered this

last updated: 24-06-2008

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Hardware: first impression

Uppon first boot all my hardware seems to be working, including my graphics card, the mute sound button and even the SD Card Reader (this one doesn’t work out of the box in Windows).

So far I only had to manually config my wired connection (I have DHCP turned off) and restart the network service.

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

last updated: 20-03-2008

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Partition Map

First thing to decide is how will I partition my hard drive.

/dev/sda
	/dev/sda1	ext3	/	10240 MB
	/dev/sda5	ext3	/home 	10240 MB
	/dev/sda6	ext3	/data 	58547 MB
	/dev/sda7	swap		1028 MB

I used some useful resources to decide:

• Ubuntu Forums Partition Basics
• Explanation of the Ubuntu / Linux file structure

last updated: 20-03-2008

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