(because I wouldn’t need to insert my registration details!). As time went on and these features were implemented, IĬontinued to stick with Synergy and didn’t bother to try out Barrier… mostly out of inertia: Synergy worked fine, and the only thing Barrier seemed to offer would be a simpler set-up Suitable alternative for me, because it lacked features I cared about that were only available in the premium version of Synergy. Initially, I didn’t consider Barrier to be a I’ve been aware of Barrier since the project started, as a fork of the last open-source version of the core Synergy program. If you ever need a practical example of where open-source thinking provides a better user experience than arbritrarily closed-source products, please see above. So why, after all these years, have I jumped ship?ĭear Future Dan. If it sounds like I’m a fanboy… that’d probably be an accurate assessment of the situation. I’ve been following with bated breath announcements about the next generation – Synergy 3 – and I’ve registered as an alpha tester for when the time comes. Slick new configuration interface it sported. Testers: despite the stability issues and limitations, I loved the fact that I could have what was functionally multiple co-equal “host” computers, and – when it worked – I liked the When their problem-stricken 2.x branch went into beta, I was among the Model changed I got grandfathered-in to a lifetime subscription to Synergy Pro. In exchange, I gained access to Synergy Premium, and then when their business The development of this tool that I used so much, and so I donated money towards funding its development. It used to provide more in the open-source offering: you could download aįully-working copy of the software and use it without limitation, losing out only on a handful of features that for many users were unnecessary. Synergy’s published under a hybrid model: open-source components, with paid-for extra features. So when I pick up my laptop, it magically stops being controlled by my Windows PC’s mouse and keyboard until I dock it Gets detected and it’s automatically removed from the cluster. when I undock my Macbook it switches from ethernet to wifi, this I also love that I can configure my set-up around how I work, e.g. But none of them are as seamless as what Synergy does: moving from computer to computer as fast as you can move your mouseĪnd sharing a clipboard between multiple devices. KVM switches can do this, asĬan some modern wireless mice (I own at least two such mice!). There have long been similar technologies. And I can move my mouse cursor from one, to the other, to the next, interacting with them all as if I were connected directly to it. Right now, for example, I’m sitting in front of Cornet, a Debian 11 desktop, Idiophone, a Macbook Pro docked to a desktop monitor, and Renegade, a If you’ve not come across it before: Synergy was possibly the first multiplatform tool to provide seamless “edge-to-edge” sharing of a keyboard and mouse between multipleĬomputers. I’m not certain exactly when I took this screenshot (which I shared with Kit while praising Synergy), but it’s clearly a pre-1.4 versionĪnd those look distinctly like Windows Vista’s ugly rounded corners, so I’m thinking no later than 2009? But this long love affair ended this week when I made the switch to its competitor, By the time I wrote about myĪdmiration of its notification icon back in 2010 I’d already been using it for some years. I’ve been using Synergy for a long, long time.
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