Multi-Computer Environment
I’m lucky. At my desk at work, I have 5 Widescreen LCD’s (2 30", 2 24", and an IBM T221) connected to 3 computers. At home I have my personal computer with a simple 21" LCD, and I have a work Laptop. All together, that’s 5 computers I work with on a daily basis (not counting the MythTV, or time spent on other coworker’s computers). With so many computers on so many architectures (Windows XP, XP64, Suse, Debian, & Redhat Enterprise) it quickly becomes problematic moving between them. I’ve found several tools that can make this significantly easier, and I thought I’ld share them here with all of you.
The tools fall into two main groups. First there are the Consistency Tools, the tools that let the different machines share data so that some of the most common operations are the same across them. First and foremost is FireFox. It runs on pretty much every platform in existence, and operates the same on all of them. I combine this with the Del.Icio.Us Firefox Extension to let me access my bookmarks from any of my computers. This helps alot with my basic Day-to-Day activities. I also use VIM as my editor on the *nix systems, so Vim for Windows is a must as well, along with the changes to remove all the Windows Specific Stuff.
The other group is the Efficiency Tools, the tools that let me work more efficiently across the large environments. These tools mostly apply to my work environment. Having 6-feet of horizontal desktop real-estate, and 3 keyboards/mice to manage is a real pain. That’s why Synergy is one of my favorite tools. It is essentially a software-based KVM-Switch, allowing you to use the Keyboard and Mouse on a single (master) machine on multiple machines. I add my new MarbleMouse Trackball into the mix so I don’t give myself carpel tunnel mousing from end-to-end, and it’s a serious productivity improvement. Synergy also has a few other nice features like the shared clipboard, being able to Cut Text on my Linux Desktop and paste it into an email on my Windows Machine is a huge boon as well.
Launchy is another great productivity tool. Mac users familiar with Quicksilver will recognize it, but it’s essentially a windows equivalent. I have it scanning my entire Start Menu for shortcuts, as well as another directory where I’ve placed special shortcuts (via Putty) to all my remote linux systems. A quick "Alt-Spacebar, H-O-Enter" and I’m connected via SSH to my computer at Home. Speaking of which, working with so many Linux systems makes Putty a requirement in my environment. Combining it with XMing ( A Free X-Server for Windows), I’m able to use my Windows Machine as my primary desktop for most functions. I also use the new Lifehacker "Better GMail" extension to let me use Keyboard Shortcuts to operate GMail (my main email tools).
I also have alot of custom tools I’ve written to make some things faster. These consist of primarily TCL and Python Scripts that use plink to connect to various systems. I chose TCL & Python because of their ability to run equally well on Linux & Windows systems. When I have to use C, I primarily use GNU compilers and CMake, again for the cross-platform nature of the tools.
All of this together gives me a pretty much uniform environment across all my systems. It’s not perfect, and I’m constantly finding new and better tools to do the same work. I try my best to share them here, but it’s a hit and miss approach 
Any of you have any other tools worth me trying?
[tag:software][tag:productivity][tag:crossplatform][tag:windows][tag:linux]
