#kvmswitch

danie10@squeet.me

Does Your Next Monitor Need a KVM Switch?

Man sitting at desk with his hands on a keyboard and on a mouse. The screen in front of him is an ultra-wide screen which shows a 50-5- split view with a desktop on the left side, whilst the right side shows a game being played on the same monitor.
I never thought about this before, really for a monitor. I’ve heard about them being used as standalone switches, and still think that may be more flexible.

However, if you have one ultra-wide monitor, maybe it would make sense to split that display into two sides, and have a computer working on each side (a bit like having two physical monitors).

The main point of a KVM switch is to improve your productivity by allowing you to use multiple computers with one monitor, mouse, and keyboard. It’s there in the name: KVM stands for “keyboard, video, mouse,” and when a monitor is equipped with a KVM switch, you can easily swap between multiple devices utilizing it.

Where I certainly can use a KVM switch is for the times I just want to connect my Macbook Air, or maybe even my Samsung Dex on my phone, to one of my monitors. The reason is right now when I connect a different device to one of my monitors, the OS recognises the monitor as disconnected, and it rearranges my desktop. If a KVM switch can make that operation a bit slicker and smoother, it could be useful.

I’ll certainly not be rushing out though to go buy a monitor just to get a KVM switch. I’d really only think about this when buying another monitor, and I’d also need to consider whether I’ll just replace one of my three monitors, or buy an expensive ultra-wide monitor with a KVM switch. Really decisions only for a future time, I hope.

I’ve only previously looked at KVM switches for remote management of a computer, but I’m thinking it is time to get to know more about just how KVM switches can be used.

See https://lifehacker.com/tech/your-next-monitor-needs-a-kvm-switch
#Blog, #KVM, #KVMswitch, #monitors, #technology

danie10@squeet.me

Barrier is a free and open source alternative to Synergy for sharing a keyboard and mouse cross-platform

Yes I did post about this application a good two years back, but it is well worth repeating. Yes you could run VNC or similar remote manager, but that is often a lot of overhead as it's also replicating the display.

I use Barrier when I want to do something on my Macbook Air and the Macbook is connected to one of my desktop screens, and I can then use my mouse and keyboard that I'm using on my main Linux desktop machine, with the advantage of clipboard copy-and-paste between the two as well. This will work just as well with a dedicated Raspberry Pi that you just attach to one of your screens. It works across Windows, Linux (inc Pi), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and MacOS.

Synergy went paid model only and Barrier was forked from it, so it is fully open source and free to use.

See Barrier Is the new Free and Open Source Synergy - share keyboard and mouse cross-platform - NEXTOFWINDOWS.COM

#technology #opensource #barrier #KVMswitch #crossplatform

Image/photo

With COVID and the new work from home norm, your home office setup is going to trumps everything else. For those of us that have multiple devices to work


https://gadgeteer.co.za/barrier-free-and-open-source-alternative-synergy-sharing-keyboard-and-mouse-cross-platform