You're viewing a single post. I have much more to say! The main blog page is a good starting point.

Fake dual screen

Friday, March 10, 2006 ★ 16:07 ★ Category Linux

If you ever use two machines at the same time and they’re both on the same desk, I’m sure you have at least once made the mistake I make every couple of minutes: you use the wrong keyboard and mouse.

This is where x2x comes into play. Quoting the man page: “x2x allows the keyboard and mouse on one X display to be used to control another X display.” In my case, the laptop screen is on the left side (west) of my desktop monitor, so I run the following command on my laptop to connect to my desktop machine:

ssh -X desktop-machine x2x -west -from :0

After logging in (without prompting for a password, thanks to ssh-agent) I can use my desktop keyboard and trackball (I don’t like mice) to control both machines. Of course you need to enable X forwarding over ssh (edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to turn it on) first. When I move my mouse to the left side of my desktop monitor, it jumps over to the right side of my laptop screen. Rock!

Update: Running this x2x setup concurrently the other way around (from desktop to laptop) causes an infite input loop on both machines. I had to pull the plug (just the network cable) to regain control over my keyboard… so, only use this in one direction!