TL;DR: Want to use my desktop keyboard/mouse with my Laptop. What software are you using/enjoying? Arch+KDE w/ Wayland will be the main host, main client is Windows 11. Secondary hosts may be Debian and MacOS, same client, but low priority on the Mac.
Hey folks, I’m rearranging some things a bit at home, would love to get some current thoughts on keyboard/mouse sharing over IP (no video).
I have to put up with some tools that don’t play nicely with wine/proton, and so my work laptop is a windows device. I’ll be controlling that device primary from Arch and Debian, though MacOS is a possibility. I’d like to keep the laptop closed and not add another mouse/keyboard into the mix, so Keyb/Mouse over IP it is.
Here’s what I’m looking at, haven’t tried them all yet, but looking for opinions:
- Barrier - Dead fork. Hasn’t been updated in some time, being superseded by input-leap. Most portions of the project managed by someone who had not been active for a couple years before the Input Leap fork.
- Input Leap - Forked from Barrier at the end of 2021, and nearly 3 years later, no stable binary releases yet. Development seems fairly active, but no binary releases yet doesn’t provide a massive amount of confidence that it will be stable. Doesn’t mean I won’t build and test though.
- Lan Mouse - Seems pretty neat, the lack of input capture on MacOS could create an issue for me in certain situations, but I can work around that if I need to for the rare times I’d need it. Traffic is unencrypted/plaintext. Its entirely local, and I’ve got more security than most users (and some companies), but still. Probably leading the pack right now.
- Deskflow - Upstream project for Synergy, a rename to differentiate the user project from Synergy. TONS of recent activity, but the switch is very recent. I don’t know if there are any binaries built, but its a longstanding project (and like many, many others, I used Synergy before it went commercial, it was nice).
Any other options out there? Good/bad experiences with any of these?
Synergy has always been my go-to for a software KVM. It’s currently only $30, and it works great. I paid for a license probably a decade ago, and I’ve more than recouped my utility cost.
Fair point, and I’m not entirely against commercial software. Probably easier to deploy to my work laptop too.
Synergy will be on the list
EDIT: May have spoken too soon. No wayland support still it looks like. From what I can see its been on the list since around 9 months ago, was 6 weeks away 5 months ago, but as of today still not available. I’ll give it a go just to check, but I don’t think libei support will be in until 3.2. Current version up is 3.0.
Edit 2: Usable code is out, so screw it, going to rework the home setup. Worst case scenario I’ll keep a spare mouse and keyboard handy for the laptop. Going to start testing out the others in earnest in the meantime once I’ve reworked my desk (and figured out where the hell I’m putting a 50" monitor that’s apparently arriving next week for testing).
I do t think it works with Wayland yet, does it?
I’ve been doing something insane that keeps Barrier working. I have Firefox and KeePassXC flatpaks installed and forced to use X11 fallback so they can autotype together. And coincidentally, that means Barrier can mouse off the server screen to the client machine if I have Firefox maximized on that edge. And never any other time. But maybe that’s helpful to someone.
This post reminded me how stupid that was. So I installed input-leap on a distrobox arch container. Now it all instantly works. My existing Barrier clients just connected as usual with no tweaks. Apparently it was already installed in Aurora-dx directly, but that version didn’t work for some reason. I suppose I’m glad I went the long way and you reminded me to try.
Haha, that reminds me of this classic xkcd
Barrier is synergy but no cost
E: It works fine for me across macos, windows and Linux but I don’t use Wayland so that might affect you.
E2 looks like Wayland breaks barrier.
Yeah, Wayland definitely complicates things. I dropped synergy before v2 and no longer being open, v3 is apparently 1 with some GUI on top. I can build v1 (deskflow), as long as they are keeping the main bit underneath open I don’t mind supporting them with a $50 one time payment. We will see how it goes though, their Wayland support is still in Dev.
I had expected to see input leap further along since it had been 3 years since the fork (and 2 more years since the maintainer of the repo was active), but it doesn’t seem ready for release, as they even recommend sticking with the last barrier release for now according to their readme.
Right now, deskflow/synergy seems the most promising.
I don’t use Wayland for other reasons, but if I did and it broke barrier I’d switch to x11.
Might be worth investigating what you use that is incompatible with x…
Not really an option for me or it would interrupt some other stuff I work on personally. I could make it not my main PC and go back to Debian, but it would also mean less time for me testing my stuff. So I’m more likely to just forget IP keyboard/mouse sharing and stick one of my little keyboards and a mouse there.
The rest of the main use machines are all on what amounts to an overly expensive physical KVM (work stuff freebie), so the only reason to use the software based option is the laptop.
What kvm if you don’t mind my asking?
More of a video switcher with USB host switching, but works nicely as a KVM. Lightware Taurus
Serial and audio outs? You got me seriously rethinking my bench…
For the record, you may see some of these show up on ebay or something, they have been discontinued (really they just changed the line, same hardware with more variation and flexibility, which also means more variation in pricing, but also stuff like a transmitter/receiver option).
Since they are discontinued though, some companies may replace soon, so they may show up somewhere for much cheaper.
Audio which can be brought out to an amp or into a processor, relay controls, even occupancy sensor support (standard 24v line, works with pretty much anything), ability to set custom edids, and a very capable API on the base, as well as custom packages that can be installed (based around node).
Yeah its a wildly powerful little box. List price is like $2500 or so though!
Since I switched to Wayland, I could not find an alternative for barrier that I used under X. After a lot of search I bumped into a project called rkvm. You can check it out. It is a bit more difficult to setup than barrier but it works pretty well for me.
The only bad thing is that both computers must run linux.
Neat project! I especially like that it goes for raw keycodes, real nice approach.
Unfortunately the Windows support is a hard requirement for me, but hopefully someone else sees and takes advantage
This is what I’ve been missing the most since switching to Wayland.
I was testing again yesterday, on Fedora mainly.
lan-mouse is a bit clunky. It requires too many clicks to start on Gnome. bi-directional. Couldn’t get it to work on NixOS but I’m new to it.
Input leap can be finicky to install and set up too, depending on your system. For some reason on my setup it lags a lot, and from time to time I have to reconnect. They don’t give an easy access to builds, but you can find them. It requires to be connected with a GitHub account though.
Definitely clunky on lan-mouse.
I’ll give input-leap a check with my gh account logged in, see how it goes - I’m curious if I’ll have the same fun with latency. Since its mostly for meeting stuff, a bit of lag is ok, but if its choppy or otherwise severe that could be an issue, definitely…
@curbstickle or you can use https://github.com/sipeed/NanoKVM
Not going to work for me, I don’t want to access it through a browser, but have it on a separate monitor, and only use the main kb/m to control. Great little device, just not a fit for what I need.
