Synergy. This piece of software is probably the coolest thing I have come across. This beautiful example of GPL goodness allows you to delegate keyboard/mouse control from one computer across a collection of other computers on the same network regardless of OS. So think multi-monitor with a dash of multi-process, multi-OS and multi-GPU — essentially multi-computing.

Running my Ubuntu laptop alongside my dual monitor work computer with Synergy immediately creates a triple monitor and dual OS system. Besides the inability to drag windows across computers (uhm… think about it, not possible anyways) this software is amazing. It even allows the ability to share your clipboard amongst all the computers and handles window focusing beautifully, as well as many other amazing features. But what can I run it on??

• Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me (the Windows 95 family)
• Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP (the Windows NT family)
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
• Unix
  • X Windows version 11 revision 4 or up
  • XTEST extension
    (use “xdpyinfo | grep XTEST” to check for XTEST)

There you have it. Go try out this piece of wonderful invention!