There’s really not much to setting up Synergy in the latest Ubuntu. The reason I’m writing this is because I ran into a roadblock while setting it up and it was a stupid mistake on my part. I know someone else will probably make the same mistake.
I’m used to Debian-based distros. I ran Debian for a few years on my home desktop, and I use Debian on my personal development servers. I should have realized that synergy and quicksynergy were in the Ubuntu repositories. It just makes sense. They are even available for the 64bit version.
Before I realized this, I looked for the package in Ubuntu’s “Add and remove software” app. I searched for synergy and found nothing. Stupid me assumed that it wasn’t available. I should have just ran the ole trusty apt-cache search synergy. Assuming that it wasn’t in the repos, I downloaded the source. The only binary available for Linux was in RPM form. I just don’t like converting RPMs to DEBs using Alien. Sorry. So, I tried to compile it. I ran in to a few issues while trying to compile. That’s when I decided to check the repos. Lo and behold, there both packages were. So to install synergy and the nice graphical front-end for it called quicksynergy, simple run: sudo apt-get install synergy quicksynergy
I’m pretty sure these are both in the universe repository. However, in the event I’m incorrect, they are at least in the multiverse repo. So if universe doesn’t turn up anything, just add multiverse. If you don’t know how to do that, Google.
If you’ve never tried Synergy out, it’s one of those must have apps for Linux, Windows, or OS X. It’s useful if you have more than one computer and more than one monitor, but only want to use one keyboard and one mouse. It makes the two computers seem to work in unison by sharing the keyboard and mouse over IP. It’s not exactly the same as KVM over IP because video doesn’t get shared.
It’s great for me because I have a regular desktop and my “server” box at my desk. I have dual displays on my main box and I now have another display connected to my “server”. My keyboard and mouse are shared between the two computers. When I mouse over to the far right hand side of my main box’s desktop the mouse goes to my server box’s display. My keyboard then works on it. Mousing back to the left gives control back to my main box.
If you’ve never tried synergy, give it a shot. It’s open source, free, and extremely handy.