For those of you who have no idea what I just spewed out with my keyboard, Synergy lets you share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems. Its actually ridiculously seemless, just like running dual monitors on one machine.

So, lets get down to the How-to. FIrst, we’ll configure the Mac, as that will act as my server. This means we will be using the mouse/keyboard connected to this machine. For this, I downloaded a nifty tool called SynergyKM, which adds the Synergy setup to your system preferences, as well as displays the connection status in the menu bar.

Once you’ve installed it, run SynergyKM through the System Preferences window. Under the General tab, hit the “share my keyboard and mouse” radio button.

Next you’ll then need to add the screen names of the computers you will be using. These names will be the host names of the said machines.

To find the host name of a Mac, open the sharing preference pane in System Prefs. Whatever you see in the Computer Name section is what you’ll name that computer in Synergy. For the Linux machine, just run the command hostname. This can be run on the Mac as well, but may be appended with the line .local.

Finally, make sure the screens are in the order you want them to be. I have my Mac on the right, but its your preference. Just drag the screens and pick your poison.

Its basically the same deal on the linux box, only instead of synergyKM, I used a program called QuickSynergy.

To install it, just follow the usual command line procedure:

./configure
make
make install

You will need the GTK 2.0 and libglade-2.0 development packges installed on your computer in order to achieve a successful compilation.

Next, slect the Client tab on the QuickSynergy main window. Fill in the field with the server’s (in this case the mac) IP address/hostname and the click Start. It may take a couple seconds to kick off, but you should be able to rock the mac mouse and keyboard on both computers now!

Finally, synergy by default will not run on startup on the Linux machine. In order to do so, go to system/preferences/sessions. Add a new startup program. Call it whatever you want, and make it call the following command, just replace the x’s with the server ip:

synergyc -f xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

In case that was all total freaking gibberish to you try the video or links below, or just comment on this post. I’ll be happy to help you if I can:

http://quicksynergy.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergykm

Special thanks to my boy Tomas for showing me the ways of the Synergy Ninja.
_Rob

Ok, so I recently decided I wanted to sew my wild oats and install Linux. When I came to this blithering idiot of a conclusion, I neglected to take into account how my home-brew PC with its dinosaur of a wireless card would handle the situation.

I went with Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex. When I initially booted up, I was greeted immediately with a working wireless connection. Oh yeah, I rock. This connection, however proceeded to last for a period of about 15 nanoseconds before it started to violently fluctuate for ten minutes, culminating in a permanent disconnection.

I researched the problem (on my windows machine, as Ubuntu was currently stabbing me in the face with anti-internet forks) and stumbled across a package called ndiswrapper. My first real Linux test was about to begin.

Now, Ubuntu comes pre-installed with the ndiswrapper module. This helps you out exactly zero percent, I just wanted to let you know. I still needed to install the utils package to get it up and running. I am running 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (If you don’t know what that is, look here) so I grabbed the necessary packages here:

* http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/misc/ndiswrapper-common
* http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/misc/ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
* http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/net/ndisgtk

I transferred them to a directory on my Linux machine (any will do) and ran the following terminal commands in the below order:

sudo dpkg -i ndiswrapper-common_*.deb
sudo dpkg -i ndiswrapper-utils*.deb
sudo dpkg -i --force-depends ndisgtk_*.deb

*note – the sudo command will run any subsequent commands as a super user. You will need to enter your password.

Before installing my windows ones, I needed to disable Ubuntu’s included free drivers. Apparently since v6.06 they’ve been including these, although they only work for a handful of wireless drivers that probably never existed. The following terminal command opened my modprobe blacklist.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

At the bottom of the file I added the following:

#This is a list of drivers that hate my belkin wireless
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist ssb

I then downloaded the latest drivers for my Belkin F5D7050 Wireless G Adapter (again on my windows machine, this time while punching the Linux one). When opening the .exe file in Ubuntu, it extracted the files like a normal zip file would.

Next, I went to System / Administration / Windows wireless drivers. I clicked “install new driver” and located the .INF file in the directory I extracted my Belkin drivers to. I then restarted, and much to my glass is half empty surprise, I was graced with a wireless connection.

*note – If it says that the hardware is not present, you probably have the wrong driver.

In conclusion, despite my sarcastic attitude, setting up wireless on Ubuntu was easier than Windows. If anyone has questions, or problems setting up their own wireless, feel free to post below.