TL;DR: Want to use my desktop keyboard/mouse with my Laptop. What software are you using/enjoying? Arch+KDE w/ Wayland will be the main host, main client is Windows 11. Secondary hosts may be Debian and MacOS, same client, but low priority on the Mac.

Hey folks, I’m rearranging some things a bit at home, would love to get some current thoughts on keyboard/mouse sharing over IP (no video).

I have to put up with some tools that don’t play nicely with wine/proton, and so my work laptop is a windows device. I’ll be controlling that device primary from Arch and Debian, though MacOS is a possibility. I’d like to keep the laptop closed and not add another mouse/keyboard into the mix, so Keyb/Mouse over IP it is.

Here’s what I’m looking at, haven’t tried them all yet, but looking for opinions:

  • Barrier - Dead fork. Hasn’t been updated in some time, being superseded by input-leap. Most portions of the project managed by someone who had not been active for a couple years before the Input Leap fork.
  • Input Leap - Forked from Barrier at the end of 2021, and nearly 3 years later, no stable binary releases yet. Development seems fairly active, but no binary releases yet doesn’t provide a massive amount of confidence that it will be stable. Doesn’t mean I won’t build and test though.
  • Lan Mouse - Seems pretty neat, the lack of input capture on MacOS could create an issue for me in certain situations, but I can work around that if I need to for the rare times I’d need it. Traffic is unencrypted/plaintext. Its entirely local, and I’ve got more security than most users (and some companies), but still. Probably leading the pack right now.
  • Deskflow - Upstream project for Synergy, a rename to differentiate the user project from Synergy. TONS of recent activity, but the switch is very recent. I don’t know if there are any binaries built, but its a longstanding project (and like many, many others, I used Synergy before it went commercial, it was nice).

Any other options out there? Good/bad experiences with any of these?

  • FranksScienceMonster@slrpnk.net
    3·
    3 months ago

    I’ve been doing something insane that keeps Barrier working. I have Firefox and KeePassXC flatpaks installed and forced to use X11 fallback so they can autotype together. And coincidentally, that means Barrier can mouse off the server screen to the client machine if I have Firefox maximized on that edge. And never any other time. But maybe that’s helpful to someone.

    This post reminded me how stupid that was. So I installed input-leap on a distrobox arch container. Now it all instantly works. My existing Barrier clients just connected as usual with no tweaks. Apparently it was already installed in Aurora-dx directly, but that version didn’t work for some reason. I suppose I’m glad I went the long way and you reminded me to try.