Comments on: Alternatives to the program Synergy (keyboard and mouse over network)?

Question: Alternatives to the program Synergy (keyboard and mouse over network)?

wastelands — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:15:24 -0800

Alternatives to the program Synergy (keyboard and mouse over network)?

When I first got Synergy, I loved it. It was like magic.

But I've left the honeymoon phase and discovered some really frustrating bugs. On my Windows machines, the copy/paste will often by very delayed, or I'll have to move the cursor from A to B to A to B machines to get it to paste. Also the cursor frequently gets "stuck" for a few seconds between machines.

I came to find out that Synergy is not being maintained at all. It's a 3-year old build! WTF?

Can anyone recommend programs that work at least as good as Synergy, preferably those that are open source and multi-platform?

Thanks!

By: matthewr

matthewr — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:21:03 -0800

I'm in exactly the same place -- I got fed up with Synergy's freezes yesterday, and found Synergy+, which is a maintenance fork of Synergy. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully it fixes some of these bugs.

By: wastelands

wastelands — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:40:47 -0800

matthewr, you rock. Thanks. I will give that a shot.

By: wongcorgi

wongcorgi — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:49:28 -0800

Stardock has Multiplicity, but works on Windows machines only.

By: unsurmountable

unsurmountable — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:55:42 -0800

You may want to open the app, go into options and put a checkmark next to 'Don't take foreground on windows servers' I was having a lot of freezing caused by Outlook 2007 and this solved my problem completely.

By: wastelands

wastelands — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:13:51 -0800

Well, Synergy {lus gets an "okay" rating from me. So far I have not encountered my freeze or copy/paste bugs. But I did get a third bug that I used to have on the non-plus version too, where either the ALT or CTRL keys will "stick" for awhile. This is really annoying, e.g. I could not alt-tab for a few minutes just now.

But if I continue to avoid the freeze and the copy/paste bugs, it will be a net gain.

By: flutable

flutable — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:42:01 -0800

Maxivista

By: wfrgms

wfrgms — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:15:35 -0800

In Synergy's defense, I've been using it without hassle for many years in diverse settings.

Are you sure your problems are not network-related?

By: matthewr

matthewr — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:24:32 -0800

There are definitely bugs in Synergy, such as intermittently hanging for a few seconds with the mouse "stuck". Even if the underlying cause is network problems, it shouldn't be doing that.