At work I have a Mac laptop and a linux desktop. Sometimes I wind up wanting to do things on the mac laptop but the vast majority of the time I use my linux machine. The problem is I can’t stand using the stupid mouse on the mac laptop and I’d rather use a full sized keyboard. I could always have two sets of mice and keyboards on my desk, but really who has the space for such extravagances.
The solution I have is called synergy, I’ve used it before but never on a mac. Basically what synergy does is make a network connection between your machines and then shares your mouse and keyboard. One of the machines acts as a server (In my case my linux box, but more on that later) and the other is a client. Whichever machine you designate as the server is the machine that has the shared mouse and keyboard.
The only problem with the solution is that synergy does nothing to encrypt your traffic. That’s really bad news if you are typing passwords and such. The solution is pretty simple (as long as you can set up an openssh server on the box), basically you port forward a port on your machine to a port on the server machine using ssh. This allows you to make the connection over an ssh pipe. I know it sounds scary but if you know how to set up an ssh server then its really just one command. The only thing to note is that if you don’t use the default port (which you shouldn’t) then you have to specify the port with the -p flag when you run the ssh command synergy gives you.
At some point I may set up a little bash script to automate the process but its really just two commands on my mac so I haven’t bothered yet… So now I have one big happy desktop made up of linux and mac… I’m so happy.
Your site is great. Some day you will have to teach me more about this so I can give it a try.
We should post some of you cousin’s photos (pure art) for an international flare.