7 ms·

I've used the software Synergy [1] in the past as a software based KVM which has the advantage of being cross-platform with linux and Windows. It works fairly w

by least 5y ago

I've used the software Synergy [1] in the past as a software based KVM which has the advantage of being cross-platform with linux and Windows. It works fairly well but some of the features that Apple is promising with Universal Control are ones that Symless has struggled to deliver in their product, probably due to the fact that they don't control the entire stack like Apple does. They've promised drag and drop, copy and paste, and other features between systems but it seems that they've stopped advertising them as upcoming features. Universal Control stood out to me as one of the more interesting ones of the WWDC keynote and one that I could see myself using, but am a tad skeptical it'll deliver on its promise fully. Apple's other continuity features are remarkably useful and great when they work, but in the cases that they don't (which while not normal, isn't uncommon enough to say they're a non-issue) it can be a real pain. This sort of feature needs to be rock-solid if you intend to integrate it into your personal workflow. [1] https://symless.com/synergy https://symless.com/synergy

AshamedCaptain 5y ago
synergy1 already has both drag and drop and copy and paste and I use those daily. However DnD doesn't seem to work between GNU/Linux and anything else.
nanidin 5y ago
Copy/paste works for me between Windows and Mac in Synergy.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  Works flawlessly with no special setup between Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
adrusi 5y ago
Apple technologies in general are great when they work, but entirely impervious to troubleshooting.
- ed_balls 5y ago
  I upgraded my 2017 macbook to Big Sur and the OS doesn't detect camera anymore. I tired 10 different things from checking permissions, reseting SMC and VRAM. No dice :/
  - sanirank 5y ago
    I had similar issues, and tried the same to no avail. The only thing that worked was a complete reinstall of the operating system. Am guessing you might need to do the same.
    - spicybright 5y ago
      I was paralyzed with panic when my mac randomly shutdown, and did a 1 hour update, thinking it was upgrading to big sur. Thankfully it was something else, and I was able to keep catalina. I refuse to be a QA engineer for apple for no pay. Running one OS version behind has worked really well so far.
      - brailsafe 5y ago
        fwiw, I was of the same opinion and update cadence, but then just installed Big Sur (from Mojave) and it's been totally fine. The only exception is that Omnifocus 2 bugs out a bit and shows a graphical artifact that they refuse to patch.
        eyelidlessness 5y ago
        It’s not a great sign when the earliest OS X success dev success story is refusing to patch bugs :( That’s a sincere frown. I don’t use Omni’s apps but I’m really disappointed that the high quality of the Mac app ecosystem is basically gone.
        brailsafe 5y ago
        I agree, although in fairness they've come out with a v3 that's fully supported. Since it's only marginally different, and aesthetically less appealing, I haven't bothered buying it.
nmg 5y ago
Highly recommend Synergy for moving between Mac, Linux, and Windows seamlessly. It's a first day install for me on a new system
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Used synergy in the past, but recently read that Barrier is the one to use these days. I installed it and it works.
paulryanrogers 5y ago
Barrier[0] is a free Synergy fork from before they went commercial. Though I'm tempted to try the commercial version just for something easier to use. [0] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
- yebyen 5y ago
  I have a license for Synergy Pro, and they've stopped pushing users to use the garbage broken Synergy 2 which has always had enough issues to prevent me from recommending it, now users are directed to the latest Synergy 1 release, which works great for me across Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Always has...) It was $5 iirc. I got more than what I paid for out of it. No hard feelings to those that I'm sure worked hard and put a lot of effort in on Synergy 2 once long ago. It wasn't meant to be. It won't be released in 2022 or 2023 either LOL, not in any kind of shape that you want to use, (or I'll gladly eat my own shoe leather in atonement for my heavy but informed skepticism.)
nly 5y ago
Symless have also struggled because the CEO shut the company down in 2018 and for 2 years thereafter collected revenue while having no active developers (check GitHub) so he could pay a huge self-inflicted personal tax bill. It is claimed Synergy 3 will arrive in 2022 or 2023, which I expect (no insider info) will likely be a lipstick-on-a-pig Electron UI around the same buggy core they've been prodding for 10 years without substantial enhancement. Disclosure: I worked at Symless on Synergy 2, and added support for macOS media keys. Very little has been done in the last 5-6 years on core functionality.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Was that tax bill why it went completely commercial around 2018 and why the company became headquartered in the Isle of Man? If so, how big of a tax bill was it and for what tax(es)?
  - nly 5y ago
    In the UK company directors can borrow money from their companies, but if it isn't repaid after a certain duration a tax of 32.5% becomes due. The public record[0] tells the story Year end April 2017: - Number of employees : 6 - Directors Loan : £238K - Balance sheet : £154K - Tax due : £60K Year end April 2018: - Number of employees : 8 - Directors Loan : £999K (prev rolled over) - Balance sheet : £736K - Tax due : £303K Year end April 2019: - Number of employees : 2 - Directors Loan : £1.27M (prev rolled over) - Balance sheet : £1.1M - Tax due : £307K Year end May 2020: - Number of employees : 1 - Directors Loan : £253K (£1.1M has been repaid) - Balance sheet : £227K - Tax due : £15K Repaying the loan would have allowed for the 32.5% tax owed by the company to be reclaimed, then regular corporation tax of 19% and personal dividend/income taxes would have been paid. My theory is that his directors loans were fully invested in personal assets (or spent), which explains why the tax wasn't ultimately paid in 2018/19. So he nerfed the company so his tax bill could paid from revenue earned between mid 2018 and early 2020. This fits with the fact that he only started rehiring seriously in 2020. Customers effectively paid for unmaintained open source software during this time. Now of course, on the website, he brags about how much he loves customers. I can't speak for the IoM move specifically. I know the CEO has familial connections there, but I'm sure the confluence of tax advantages helps. [0] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08066283/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
burnte 5y ago
As others have said, Synergy's problems are not technical but management. The guy who runs Symless isn't terribly good at business, no offense to him. the product is chronically mismanaged. Multiplicity from StarDock is Windows only but manages everything Apple's product does, too. There are open source VNC apps that handle copy/paste and DnD, it shouldn't be hard to at least look at that code as a guide, but without a good developer, Symless is rudderless.
trissylegs 5y ago
I've used Synergy on both Windows->Windows and Windows->Mac. With a Macbook Pro 2015. It's really unpleasent due to constant stuttering, unless you connect to Ethernet. This is a known issue, it's appently due to airdrop. The OS switches the modem to a different channel to check for new devices or something, and then switches back. Although it does it fast enough to maintain network connections but anything real-time just looses control for a moment. Other wifi laptops seem fine. (Using same Wifi version)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- caymanjim 5y ago
  The "easy" fix for this, if you have spare Ethernet ports, is to put a dedicated switch between the machines. I'm using Synergy right now, with peripherals on my Windows game machine (where having them connected directly is beneficial), but driving a MacBook most of the time. I have a cheap 4-port gig switch between the machines so that Synergy doesn't have to go over WiFi. The machines both use WiFi for all their Internet traffic. The switch is also great for VNC and SSH between the machines. I don't think Airdrop has any real effect; WiFi just has higher latency, more variable latency, and more packet loss than a switch will have.

by least 5y ago

AshamedCaptain 5y ago

synergy1 already has both drag and drop and copy and paste and I use those daily. However DnD doesn't seem to work between GNU/Linux and anything else.

nanidin 5y ago

Copy/paste works for me between Windows and Mac in Synergy.

caymanjim 5y ago
Works flawlessly with no special setup between Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

adrusi 5y ago

Apple technologies in general are great when they work, but entirely impervious to troubleshooting.

ed_balls 5y ago
I upgraded my 2017 macbook to Big Sur and the OS doesn't detect camera anymore. I tired 10 different things from checking permissions, reseting SMC and VRAM. No dice :/
- sanirank 5y ago
  I had similar issues, and tried the same to no avail. The only thing that worked was a complete reinstall of the operating system. Am guessing you might need to do the same.
  - spicybright 5y ago
    I was paralyzed with panic when my mac randomly shutdown, and did a 1 hour update, thinking it was upgrading to big sur. Thankfully it was something else, and I was able to keep catalina. I refuse to be a QA engineer for apple for no pay. Running one OS version behind has worked really well so far.
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      fwiw, I was of the same opinion and update cadence, but then just installed Big Sur (from Mojave) and it's been totally fine. The only exception is that Omnifocus 2 bugs out a bit and shows a graphical artifact that they refuse to patch.
      - eyelidlessness 5y ago
        It’s not a great sign when the earliest OS X success dev success story is refusing to patch bugs :( That’s a sincere frown. I don’t use Omni’s apps but I’m really disappointed that the high quality of the Mac app ecosystem is basically gone.
        brailsafe 5y ago
        I agree, although in fairness they've come out with a v3 that's fully supported. Since it's only marginally different, and aesthetically less appealing, I haven't bothered buying it.

nmg 5y ago

Highly recommend Synergy for moving between Mac, Linux, and Windows seamlessly. It's a first day install for me on a new system

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Used synergy in the past, but recently read that Barrier is the one to use these days. I installed it and it works.

paulryanrogers 5y ago

Barrier[0] is a free Synergy fork from before they went commercial. Though I'm tempted to try the commercial version just for something easier to use. [0] https://github.com/debauchee/barrier https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

yebyen 5y ago
I have a license for Synergy Pro, and they've stopped pushing users to use the garbage broken Synergy 2 which has always had enough issues to prevent me from recommending it, now users are directed to the latest Synergy 1 release, which works great for me across Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Always has...) It was $5 iirc. I got more than what I paid for out of it. No hard feelings to those that I'm sure worked hard and put a lot of effort in on Synergy 2 once long ago. It wasn't meant to be. It won't be released in 2022 or 2023 either LOL, not in any kind of shape that you want to use, (or I'll gladly eat my own shoe leather in atonement for my heavy but informed skepticism.)

nly 5y ago

Symless have also struggled because the CEO shut the company down in 2018 and for 2 years thereafter collected revenue while having no active developers (check GitHub) so he could pay a huge self-inflicted personal tax bill. It is claimed Synergy 3 will arrive in 2022 or 2023, which I expect (no insider info) will likely be a lipstick-on-a-pig Electron UI around the same buggy core they've been prodding for 10 years without substantial enhancement. Disclosure: I worked at Symless on Synergy 2, and added support for macOS media keys. Very little has been done in the last 5-6 years on core functionality.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
Was that tax bill why it went completely commercial around 2018 and why the company became headquartered in the Isle of Man? If so, how big of a tax bill was it and for what tax(es)?
- nly 5y ago
  In the UK company directors can borrow money from their companies, but if it isn't repaid after a certain duration a tax of 32.5% becomes due. The public record[0] tells the story Year end April 2017: - Number of employees : 6 - Directors Loan : £238K - Balance sheet : £154K - Tax due : £60K Year end April 2018: - Number of employees : 8 - Directors Loan : £999K (prev rolled over) - Balance sheet : £736K - Tax due : £303K Year end April 2019: - Number of employees : 2 - Directors Loan : £1.27M (prev rolled over) - Balance sheet : £1.1M - Tax due : £307K Year end May 2020: - Number of employees : 1 - Directors Loan : £253K (£1.1M has been repaid) - Balance sheet : £227K - Tax due : £15K Repaying the loan would have allowed for the 32.5% tax owed by the company to be reclaimed, then regular corporation tax of 19% and personal dividend/income taxes would have been paid. My theory is that his directors loans were fully invested in personal assets (or spent), which explains why the tax wasn't ultimately paid in 2018/19. So he nerfed the company so his tax bill could paid from revenue earned between mid 2018 and early 2020. This fits with the fact that he only started rehiring seriously in 2020. Customers effectively paid for unmaintained open source software during this time. Now of course, on the website, he brags about how much he loves customers. I can't speak for the IoM move specifically. I know the CEO has familial connections there, but I'm sure the confluence of tax advantages helps. [0] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08066283/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

burnte 5y ago

As others have said, Synergy's problems are not technical but management. The guy who runs Symless isn't terribly good at business, no offense to him. the product is chronically mismanaged. Multiplicity from StarDock is Windows only but manages everything Apple's product does, too. There are open source VNC apps that handle copy/paste and DnD, it shouldn't be hard to at least look at that code as a guide, but without a good developer, Symless is rudderless.

trissylegs 5y ago

I've used Synergy on both Windows->Windows and Windows->Mac. With a Macbook Pro 2015. It's really unpleasent due to constant stuttering, unless you connect to Ethernet. This is a known issue, it's appently due to airdrop. The OS switches the modem to a different channel to check for new devices or something, and then switches back. Although it does it fast enough to maintain network connections but anything real-time just looses control for a moment. Other wifi laptops seem fine. (Using same Wifi version)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
caymanjim 5y ago
The "easy" fix for this, if you have spare Ethernet ports, is to put a dedicated switch between the machines. I'm using Synergy right now, with peripherals on my Windows game machine (where having them connected directly is beneficial), but driving a MacBook most of the time. I have a cheap 4-port gig switch between the machines so that Synergy doesn't have to go over WiFi. The machines both use WiFi for all their Internet traffic. The switch is also great for VNC and SSH between the machines. I don't think Airdrop has any real effect; WiFi just has higher latency, more variable latency, and more packet loss than a switch will have.