Synergy between Mac and PC

Can they work together. Can Mac and PC get along well. In Harmony? In Peace? I don't know. But, they sure can share a keyboard and a mouse. "Synergy" achieved this feat. Made my Wintel machine as the server and the MacTel as the client and now, am using a single keyboard and mouse for both the systems. Here's a small write-up on how I got them alive.

First, go to this link and download the corresponding OS related app. Now, since I wanted to use the windows version as the server, I opened "Share this computer's keyboard and mouse (server)'s / Screens & Links" "Configure" button.

In that, I added two screen names in the "Screens" window.
a) Click the "+" button.
b) Add "Joe-Wintel".
c) Here, there is an alias name. If you want, you can give that too. I did'nt.
d) Repeat above 3 steps for "Joe-Mactel" screen name.

Then, in "Links", section, add how the mouse and keyboard is to behave.
a) click the "+" button.
b) My two rules read something like below (Note that the italicized words are configurable)
0 to 100% of the Left of Joe-Wintel goes to 0 to 100% of Joe-Mactel
0 to 100% of the Right of Joe-Mactel goes to 0 to 100% of Joe-Wintel

Click "Start"
Your server is ready.

Now, on to your Mac system.
In the terminal window, go to the synergy app directory. You should see a "synergy.conf" File. Open it.
Modify to something like below.
Point to note. I kept my Mactel to the left of my Wintel. Now, go ahead.

section: screens
   # my Windows system
   Joe-Wintel
end

section: links
   # My Windows is to my (mactel) right
   Joe-Wintel:
       right  = Joe-Wintel
end

section: aliases
   # Where you can map aliases. I have added for your reference only. this is not validated.
   Joe-Wintel
       joe
end

I then went on to create a script to run as client. The command is

sudo ./synergyc --name Joe-Mactel Joe-Wintel &

Now, if you want to run this in the foreground, then use "-f" option. Now, you can create the above as a shell script, and call it from /etc/rc.common file so that the client is up and running the moment the system starts up. ( This way, you can be even more lazy).

And there you have both Mac and Windows living in harmony. The world is returning to peace. Amen.