
Synergy-core: Open source core of Synergy, the keyboard and mouse sharing tool - ingve
https://github.com/symless/synergy-core
======
shittyadmin
Synergy used to be great, the original developers really knew what they were
doing, but since then it's been taken over by a commercial developer that
seems to have no interest in making a good product and far more interest in
charging money for it and licensing - more bugs are introduced with every
release, clipboard support is half-broken on Linux for years, the Synergy 2.0
release now causes my mouse to continuously leave my screen while gaming even
when locked and random restarts of the service and jumping back to the middle
of the screen are far too common. I have to revert back to a very specific
version to make Synergy work acceptably and I'm reliant on it for my daily
workflow.

Worst part is I actually paid them money for it hoping they'd have fixed it by
now...

~~~
MrUnderhill
There was an open letter from the CEO just last week about re-staffing the
team to be more engineering-oriented: [https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-
synergy-team](https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team)

(Edited, thanks corpMaverick and stagger87)

~~~
gbil
Some context, the letter came only after months of the same guy dismissing
openly or behind the scenes - e.g. not approving posts on the forum - any
reported issues and calls from the users that v2 was of beta quality. So I'd
say it was an OK move but for sure a forced one after all the negative
feedback.

~~~
GiorgioG
Yep I left after the v2 beta nonsense. He locked my account out from the
forums when he didn’t like my feedback. ShareMouse is by far a better product.
I feel sorry for the employees but it’ll be a good day when symless goes out
of business.

Here’s a fine example of Nick Bolton addressing a longstanding bug:

[https://github.com/symless/synergy-
core/issues/5226](https://github.com/symless/synergy-core/issues/5226)

He deleted a bunch of comments, locked the conversation and then has the
audacity to say this a rare issue. I would have gladly helped them debug this
issue if he had behaved like an adult.

~~~
gbil
ShareMouse doesn't support Linux so it's not a 1to1 replacement. Plus I'm very
satisfied with synergy v1 just commenting on the approach from the symless CEO
here

------
nbolton4
Hi all,

I'm the CEO of Symless, the company behind Synergy. I wanted to chime in and
let everyone know that you can ask me anything (reply to this comment).

I've been working on Synergy as the lead developer since 2006 (before I
started the company). Synergy 2 is an early beta and is still under
development (the final version will be quite different to what's you see now).
All users have access to Synergy 1
([https://symless.com/synergy/downloads](https://symless.com/synergy/downloads))
which is the recommended version and is still being developed. If you need a
refund, that's absolutely fine, please get in touch:
[https://symless.com/contact](https://symless.com/contact)

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help you.

Thanks, Nick

~~~
Theodores
Chromebooks.

I know ChromeOS considers all programs to be hostile but how long does it take
to get either a) Synergy ported to this new operating system or b) some
explanation as to why there are no plans to create a ChromeOS version?

Even a phone version would be nice. It would enable people to type their texts
rather than 'peck' at the keyboard.

The thing is that people find other workarounds and other products come along
to make Synergy redundant. As an example there are the Logitech keyboards that
will connect to three devices, e.g. one's phone, computer and laptop.

Over the years I have had genuine 'wow' from people who are truly amazed, as
if it is magic when I move from computer to computer with the same
keyboard/mouse. They wonder how it works and how it is connected. Few products
are so impressive however the impression left on them is that you have to be a
linux coder with terminal screens everywhere to use it. So there is no 'where
do you get that' follow up question and therefore no mass adoption. It could
be done.

~~~
judge2020
See the related issue on the repo: [https://github.com/symless/synergy-
core/issues/3363](https://github.com/symless/synergy-core/issues/3363)

~~~
Theodores
That is quite funny. Stock Synergy on stock Windows is an install too far for
the regular folk you meet in offices, so the idea of 'just simply installing
crouton...' is just kind of lacking convenience.

I find it hard to believe that the Google people who write this ChromeOS would
not just put together a version of Synergy to solve their own development use
cases. Compared to self-driving cars it is not exactly rocket science.

I can remember when computers went from being networked to being 'personal'
and a whole generation of people used non-networked PCs, not knowing any
better. We have slipped into that era when it comes to keyboard/mouse sharing.

------
buserror
I wrote my own replacement for synergy years ago. It's called touchstream[0]
-- it's unlikely to be as full features as, but it's TONS lighter, and I've
been using between my mac workstation and my linux workstation for a good many
years without a single issue.

Mileage may very, etc etc -- I implemented the features I needed!

[0]:
[https://github.com/buserror/touchstream](https://github.com/buserror/touchstream)

~~~
morganvachon
This looks awesome and may get me to stop using Synergy altogether! One of my
daily use machines at work is a very old laptop I'm basically using as a
second screen via Lubuntu, and Synergy is the most resource-heavy program on
it by far. It's also really glitchy, causing me to have to stop working and
fix it several times a day.

~~~
craftyguy
Careful, it doesn't appear to support encrypting traffic between systems,
which means anyone can intercept mouse movements and keyboard presses, and
introduce their own.

~~~
buserror
My use is at home, on my own local switch, on the same desk. If anyone can
sniff that, I already have serious other problems.

~~~
craftyguy
Sure, but others may not realize this so I thought it was worth pointing
out... since many folks here in the thread seems to be using synergy in the
office.

------
slartibardfast0
I've got a lot of use out of this fork:

[https://github.com/debauchee/barrier](https://github.com/debauchee/barrier)

SSL & other important features

~~~
WibbletheDuck
Adding my support to this. Barrier took a little fiddling to get it working on
my 10.9 Mac, but it fixed crashes I'd had with Synergy for years, and seems to
have some active devs.

------
chriswarbo
I tried synergy, with the hope that I could control a Linux media PC from both
Linux and Windows machines. Unfortunately it was too flaky, e.g. control keys
never being released (I think it's [https://github.com/symless/synergy-
core/issues/9](https://github.com/symless/synergy-core/issues/9) ).

These days I use x2x over SSH. I don't use it on Windows, but then again I
don't use Windows ;)

I have two system services which poll the surrounding WiFi networks: when I'm
at home, I can control the media PC by moving off the left of my screen; when
I'm at work, I can control a more powerful desktop by moving off the right
(the latter goes through some multi-hop reverse SSH tunnels).

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Hey, another x2x user:) If you ever do need to include NT in the mix, you can
use x2vnc, which is almost the same thing .

------
rektide
828 open issues. 20 pull requests. trying to orchestrate complex control over
all major os'es. uggh what a nightmare.

long time user, it's always been great. runs most of my home. absolutely
invaluable.

i'd love to see standards, a mouse & keyboard & clipboard standard protocol
emerge some day.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Maybe a SPICE offshoot for non-VMs?

------
ktross
Synergy is great. I use it for sharing my mouse and keyboard between my
Windows desktop and MacBook Pro. I had some latency issues on WiFi with
Synergy 1.x, but that seems to be resolved with 2.x. Licenses are very cheap
for their commercial offering and I would highly recommend supporting them!

~~~
russh
I've not had good luck with the 2.x releases. Random mouse moves, disconnects,
jumping to the center of the screen, mouse not wanting to move between screens
and odd clipboard issues. Life is too short, I went back to a KVM.

------
netsharc
I was using an old version of Synergy, until one day it stopped working. Since
I only needed it for Windows clients, I found Mouse without Borders:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=354...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=35460) . It has the benefit that all input devices
can access all devices (Synergy has a "master-slave" structure).

~~~
sweetbacon
I too use MWB and worry about it being old and not updated. Anyone aware of
problems we should know about?

------
YunHi
The Synergy story became a joke:

This guy Nick Bolton took the project to squeeze it. He never really
contributed to quality but turned it into closed source. He claimed, that he
need to charge for it to finance dev. However, he only invested into the
payment wall backend development instead of finally making a stable product.

Nick promised, Synergy would be a lifetime license for all future versions for
$1. Sniff sniff. Yes, you smell the right thing.

He promptly broke that promise with v2 and charged again. $29!

But half of the promised features actually exist and more than half of that
actually work. Synergy became a scam.

"Open letter" sounds so cool but it is a letter of promises again. Dont fall
for it. IMHO, Nick has all narcissist symptoms: Pictures of himself everywhere
on his website and promises of everything to everyone. Typical symptoms.

Dont take my words. Look it up in Google and archive.org. His current roadmap
is his roadmap from 2014.

------
GiorgioG
I left Synergy after they refused to fix longstanding bugs (I was a paying
customer.) I paid for ShareMouse and have been happy ever since. Nick Bolton
has thin skin (he locked github issues, deleting hundreds of comments on one
particular bug because he wanted to bury it.)

------
math0ne
Used synergy for years but recently bought one of these guys which i didn't
even know existed:

[https://www.startech.com/ca/Server-Management/KVM-
Switches/2...](https://www.startech.com/ca/Server-Management/KVM-
Switches/2-Port-USB-KM-Switch-USB-Keyboard-and-Mouse-Switch-with-File-
Transfer~SVKMS2)

The software is not as configurable but it is SO much more reliable and
responsive. Basically a wired version of synergy.

~~~
CUViper
They only claim support for Windows and Mac, but do you know if it happens to
work with Linux too?

~~~
math0ne
I would guess not unfortunately.

------
bargl
I'm really happy that they open sourced their core code! That's an awesome
thing for a company that's making money from this code to do. I know they've
had some issues going from 1.x to 2.x (see other comments) but this is a
really brave step for them to take and I want to applaud them for moving to an
open source model for a portion of their paid product. I hope this helps them
turn around their 2.x version.

~~~
shittyadmin
Synergy was originally fully open source, it came out of an open source
project, what they actually did was close the frontend for 2.0.

~~~
bargl
Well dang, I thought it was closed source the whole time. Thanks for pointing
this out!

------
gsich
If you are using Windows-only machines at your desktop, you might take a look
at Input Director [0]. It is the best solution for this. Working clipboard and
file sharing, which works because it uses Windows shares.

The best feature in my eyes is that you can rightclick any file and click
"open on slave X" and the file will open there.

[0] [https://inputdirector.com/](https://inputdirector.com/)

------
Pistos2
I'm a little amazed at all the reports of problems in the comments here on HN.
I have been using Synergy for probably 15 years now, and have had very little
issue with it. I use it to connect Linux, OSX and Windows. I use what appears
to be version 2.0 on Gentoo as the main driver/server (the machine where the
keyboard and mouse are connected).

------
hugg
I've been a user and follower of Synergy for years, and I've been following it
from the perspective of the mailing list :). Honestly Nick should just give
up, open source everything, and find a new job.

------
nly
I co-developed Synergy v2.0, but have since moved on. With that in mind, if
anyone has any appropriate technical questions or concerns I'm sure Nick
wouldn't mind me answering them.

------
bitcraft
Synergy 2 has so many issues that force me to restart it several times a day.
I also need to keep the window open because my Ubuntu machine keeps stealing
input priority. It breaks copy paste randomly. But I absolutely need it for
quick cross platform testing and there seems to be no other solution besides a
KVM switch. I hope this turns the business around.

------
corpMaverick
Synergy was awesome. Then I payed for the upgrade to 2.0 and it didn't work
with corporate proxy. 2.0 has been unusable for me.

~~~
chrislynch42
Same here. Paid for 2.0 and it was unusable between by Win 10 and Ubuntu
boxes. After fighting with it for several hours I just uninstalled and wrote
it off as a loss.

------
frontier
If you only need to share a keyboard and mouse between Windows machines, then
checkout Input Director, which works great! And is free for non-commercial
use. I have no relationship with them, just a very satisfied personal user
over many years.

[http://www.inputdirector.com/](http://www.inputdirector.com/)

------
treesloth
Used Synergy awhile back for development and testing and it worked really
well. Glad to see it pop-up again brings back memories. Glad I don't "have" to
use it at the moment though.

------
dec0dedab0de
I haven't heard about synergy in over a decade. I remember a guy at work would
just use it to show off.

------
yolo1897
synergy? i was using it years ago but i have found out that "Microsoft Garage
Mouse without Borders" was superior, but i'm using only windows PCs.

------
sleepybrett
Wasn't synergy v1 basically a vnc hack?

~~~
gsich
don't think so

