Free monitor/keyboard/mouse switch

Monday, January 3rd, 2005

No money for a hardware monitor/keyboard/mouse switch? Check out X2X. From the description on Freshmeat:

“x2x allows the keyboard and mouse on one (“from”) X display to control another (“to”) X display.“.

Now I can simply run “x2x -north -to eek:0” and whenever I move the mouse off the top of the screen on my laptop, it will appear on my other machine. I can then control that machine as if I was working on it using a monitor/keyboard/mouse switch or as if it was a (semi) multi-head display. Totally awesome.

I’d really like a similar tool for X2Win or something like that.

Also check out teleport. It can move (some) X applications from one X server display to another. Applications that you want to move need to support some kind of protocol, but I couldn’t (be bothered to) find out what exactelly. I’ve tried the program though, and could at least move GTK programs and Xterms to another X server. Pretty cool stuff.

Update:
Hmm, it appears that a similar tool for X to Window exists.. it’s called *drumroll* x2win! Who would’ve thought? On the downside: the tool appears to be dead and removed from the internet. On the semi-upside, there’s a new tool called SDE3k (SuperDesktopExtender 3000). But it’s still in alpha, and I’m not sure wether it’s still being developed. I’m probably gonna mail the author and ask him about it.

Update II:
I’ve found yet another possible sollution to the problem of controlling a windows machine from a Linux machine: X2VNC. (Site seems to be down, but there’s a google cache available here. Just wait until the page works again or install X2VNC from a package in your distro).