Synergy on Ubuntu

Synergy is a program that will let you use one keyboard and mouse on multiple computers across a network. The computers can be running Linux, Windows, or MacOS. The computer with the keyboard and mouse is the server or host, and the computers with the displays to be controlled remotely are the clients. In this howto I will let you know how to get Synergy setup and running on your Ubuntu system.

Warning! Achtung! Synergy is not very secure at all! Consider - you are setting up something to allow an entirely different computer control the keyboard and mouse on your own computer! Don't try and use this anywhere unsecure! There is a way of making it more secure by running it over OpenSSH, but that is currently beyond the scope of this article. Feel free to read the documentations at the Synergy website.

QuickSynergy

There is a GUI tool available in the universe repositories for easily configuring and starting Synergy on both server- and client-side. Grabbing the quicksynergy package also installs the synergy packages themselves.

    sudo apt-get install quicksynergy

1. Run Quicksynergy on the host machine (the one with the mouse and keyboard you want to use). You can launch !Quicksynergy from the Accessories sub-menu.
2. On the Host machine only: Under the Share tab enter the name of the client machines (the ones that will "borrow" the keyboard or mouse) in one of the directional boxes. Type hostname in the client machine's terminal to find out its hostname.
3. Run Quicksynergy on a client machine.
4. On the Client machine only: Under the Use tab type the IP address of the Host machine in the IP field, and the hostname of the Client machine in the Screen field. If you don't know the host machine's ip address, you may find it by opening a terminal at the host machine and typing the commands below. It should be the first listing.
   

       ifconfig | grep "inet addr"
   

5. Click the Execute button on the Host machine.
6. Click the Execute button on the Client machine.
7. Move the mouse to the edge of the Host screen- it should now appear on the client screen.

See also http://quicksynergy.sourceforge.net and http://code.google.com/p/quicksynergy/wiki/RunningQuickSynergy

Reference: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynergyHowto