The poor man’s KVM

So I’ve been seeing people post pics on their uber workspaces with 15 monitors spread out across their wall, etc.  And I’m thinking, hey that’s cool, but I can’t afford that.  Heck, I’m still trying to get rid of all the 15″ Packaged Hell monitors spread out around the building.  Even if I could buy some more monitors, there’s be a huge outcry if they started spreading out across my desk instead of replacing those monstrosities.  Meanwhile, I’m getting tired of being in Windows all the time at work, and while the Eee is a great mobile device, it’s not something you want to sit at your desk and work on all the time.  So here’s what I’ve done.

First of all I brought another computer in from home.  I already had Ubuntu on it, so it’s all ready to be useful.  I did manage to get myself a decent 19″ LCD, and it has a DVI plus a VGA connector and I can select between the two using the front panel.  So I plugged my work-provided Windows desktop into the DVI port, and my Ubuntu machine into the VGA port.  So now I can use the same monitor for both machines by pressing a button on the front of the monitor.  Great!  Except I still need two keyboards and two mice. 

Synergy to the rescue.  Synergy is a neat little app that will let you share the same keyboard and mouse over multiple computers.  So all I need to do is drag my mouse over the the left side of the screen on my Windows machine, and the cursor shows up on the right side of the screen of the Ubuntu machine.  I went ahead and set it up so that if I drag the mouse the other way it shows up on my Eee.

So I don’t have a KVM, and I don’t have multiple monitors, but I do have three computers, my Windows desktop, my Ubuntu desktop and my Eee also running Ubuntu.  And now I only need one keyboard and one mouse to control all three just by dragging my mouse from one side of the screen to the other.  And I have one monitor for both desktops that I can switch between the two with a push of a button.

One last bit of the puzzle… I’m in IRC most of the time I’m at work, but if I’m switching between desktops I can’t always keep up on what’s going on unless I’m logged in at both desktops.  I could just login on the Eee, but I prefer a larger screen for this.  So I load up irssi in screen on the Ubuntu desktop, then ssh into it from the Windows desktop and then I can share it on both desktops.  (Thanks to Vollmond for this suggestion.)

So, nothing really novel about all this.  If we had the budget I’d definitely go about this VERY differently, but there you go, a poor man’s KVM.  Use this knowledge well.