You don’t need a hardware switch to share one keyboard and mouse amongst several different computers. All you need is the free, cross-platform application, Synergy.
Synergy connects one keyboard and mouse to any computer on your network, making a dual- or triple-computer setup work more like a dual- or triple-monitor setup. Synergy even allows you to share clipboard data across your computers and operating systems.
Today I’ll detail how to set up Synergy on your home network to control all of your desktops with one mouse and keyboard.
How it works
Synergy uses one computer as a server – that’s the computer that will be sharing its keyboard and mouse. The rest of your computers – the ones you want to control – will need to be set up as Synergy clients.
The great part about Synergy is that you can customize the program to work with the layout of your computers. For example, if you’ve got your MacBook running to the left of your Windows PC, you can set up Synergy so that moving your mouse to the left of your Windows monitor will seamlessly jump your mouse across virtual space where it lands safely on your Mac. Whichever desktop currently holds your mouse is also the desktop to which your keyboard’s keystrokes will be sent. Make sense? Add to that Synergy’s clipboard sharing and you’ve got one helluva convergence app.
What you’ll need:
If you’ll be running one or more Windows PC’s in your setup, download and install the Synergy Installer for Windows on each PC. (On the SourceForge page I’ve linked to, the current version is labeled SynergyInstaller-1.3.1.exe.)
If you want to run one or more Macs on your setup, download and install SynergyKM on each Mac you want to use.
Finally if you’re running Linux, grab the platform independent version.
The Windows and Mac downloads for Synergy both offer nice and simple GUIs for setting up Synergy, and we’ll focus on those here. The *nix version of Synergy requires editing a configuration file and running from the command line. I won’t cover that here, but this guide should help.
Set up your Synergy server
Read more here