Controlling multiple PCs Easily

What is a software KVM?

How is a software KVM different from VNC/noMachine/RDP?

What are my options for software KVM?

Paid vs Free

Compatability matters

Which one do I recommend?

Barrier is the only completely cross-platform, FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) solution and has been for quite some time. Barrier was originally a fork of v1.9 of Synergy’s open source repository; this was due to Symless abandoning all support for their Synergy v1 software and making Synergy v2 require payments to function at all.

Barrier

From the README.md on the Barrier repo:

Barrier is software that mimics the functionality of a KVM switch, which historically would allow you to use a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers by physically turning a dial on the box to switch the machine you’re controlling at any given moment. Barrier does this in software, allowing you to tell it which machine to control by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen, or by using a keypress to switch focus to a different system.

Barrier was forked from Symless’s Synergy 1.9 codebase. Synergy was a commercialized reimplementation of the original CosmoSynergy written by Chris Schoeneman.

Let’s Install it

On Windows:

Download the Barrier .exe file from here

Install as you normally would.

On MacOS:

Download the Barrier .dmg file from here

Install by opening the DMG and dragging the icon to your applications folder in Finder.

On Linux:

Barrier is easily installable from a terminal:

Ubuntu family of distros

sudo apt install barrier

RedHat family of distros

sudo dnf install barrier

Suse family of distros

sudo zypper install barrier

Find Barrier in your application menu and run it that first time.

Lets configure Barrier:

For the Server:

^{this is the one with the keyboard and mouse you want to use}

Configure as shown:

fig. 1 - configuration (main window)

fig. 2 - settings (Barrier menu)

For the Clients:

^{these are the PCs you want to control}

Configure as shown:

fig. 1 - configuration (main window)

fig. 2 - settings (Barrier menu)