Installing Synergy on Ubuntu 10.10

Synergy is a great program that lets you share your keyboard and mouse between multiple computers.  It's a must have if you have multiple computers on your desk and has some great features like a shared clipboard so you can cut and paste text from one computer to another.  If you haven't used Synergy before it's works like a normal multi-monitor setup except when you move your cursor off the edge of your screen you are controlling a different computer.  A good example is when I have my laptop at work I put it next to my desktop machine and have synergy set up so that when I move the cursor off the right hand side of my screen the mouse and keyboard attached to my desktop are now moving the cursor and typing on the laptop.  For this to work you need to have both computers connected to a network and Synergy installed.

One of the best things about Synergy is that it is cross platform and works with Linux, Windows and OSX.  The easiest way to use Synergy on Ubuntu is to install QuickSynergy which provides a GUI for managing screens and connections.

The QuickSynergy UI on Ubuntu 10.10

There are two ways to install QuickSynergy, either open the Ubuntu Software Center and search for "synergy" or type the following at the terminal:

sudo apt-get install quicksynergy

The QuickSynergy icon will now appear in your "Accessories" menu.

I have also written up a guide to installing QuickSynergy in Meego:
http://setupguides.blogspot.com/2010/09/installing-synergy-in-meego.html