Setting up Synergy for ubuntu 18.04

Two computers , one keyboard and mouse


I recently got a new Dell Inspiron 15 5000 series, being a college student it is more than enough for most of the stuff that I do, nice 8 gig of RAM, 128GB SSD , with 2tb harddrive..gaming is not very far-fetched on it too. I also had a hp notebook with 2 gig of ram lying around in spare. Having two monitors on desk is always better , so I thought of using the spare laptop as second screen...after a little googling I came upon Synergy as the possible solution... Synergy is cross platform, and even will connect two different operating systems. Allowing you to use one mouse and keyboard for a window and linux computer! Best of all, it allows cutting and pasting. You can actually cut and paste text between these computers.
I have ubuntu 18.04 on both the systems..
  1. Open terminal and type sudo apt-get install synergy on both the computers, if there's a glitch try sudo apt-get update before installing synergy.
  2. Now one computer is a server and the other is a client...it doesn't really matter which is which..
  3. On the server, you need a file called .synergy.conf it doesn't comes with the install so you need to create it...in terminal use commands touch .synergy.conf or gedit .synergy.conf or vi .synergy.conf ahh you get it right...create a file.
  4. Now before you go any further you need to find the hostnames of both the systems...on terminal your prompt is usually user@hostname:~ , and have different hostnames for both the system...for my system server has hostname sarp and client has sarp2...
  5. edit the .synergy.conf file created as

    # stomfi synergy configuration file
    #
    section: screens
    sarp:
    sarp2:
    end
    section: links
    sarp:
    left = sarp2
    sarp2:
    right = sarp
    end

  6. Now to run server, on terminal type synergys, on client side type synergyc ipaddress, ipaddress is of the server use _ip addr show_ on terminal...