Four Operating Systems on ONE Monitor
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,579 words · ~7 min read
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operating systems which one's the best
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is it uh Windows 7
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macOS Windows 10 Linux
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well we figured why decide
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we built the ultimate cross platform
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workstation running all four of them off
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of a single display and
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seamlessly check out that mouse movement between
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the different os's and this was thanks to some help from our friends at synergy
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who sponsored this video so stay tuned because we are going to
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show you guys how to do it
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all right so let's go over what we've got here first up is our computers so
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this one right here this glass tower has our arcade machine pc running Windows 7
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and there are a lot of reasons that you might still want an older version of
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Windows up and running after you've upgraded to something new
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maybe it's older hardware provides better compatibility with older software
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especially games that don't play nicely with Windows 10 maybe it's just that you
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need Windows 10 for work or school but
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you really love Windows 7 and it's telemetry free styles
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next up we've got our Windows 10 pc now
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Windows 10 supports 4k netflix with the built-in edge browser it's got directx
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12 for the latest games and of course
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pairing the newest hardware with the most current operating system often
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gives you the best driver and accompanying software experience
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now let's change gears a little bit this
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is our macbook pro maybe you moonlight as a dj and you
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prefer the professional audio tools or peripherals that work best or only on
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mac maybe you love final cut maybe you love the tight integration with your
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iphone and your apple watch there are a
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ton of reasons that you might want to have a mac as part of your ultimate
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setup so we worked it in bringing us finally
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to a little mini Intel nook
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this one right here is running Linux ubuntu to be precise so maybe you're a
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programmer who needs to be able to quickly compare different os builds side
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by side maybe you're a data scientist who works primarily in Windows but then
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needs to keep tabs on a Linux machine without ssh or an x maybe some of your
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tools just plain run best on Linux so
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overall the point we were trying to make there wasn't the specific reasons but
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just the fact that there are a lot of reasons that you might want to run
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multiple operating systems and while
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there are a ton of ways to go about this actually
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all of them come with some significant drawbacks so
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a dual boot solution like bootcamp requires a system restart to switch
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a team viewer introduces significant network latency and reduced image
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quality parallels or some other kind of
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virtualization solution gives you limited access to hardware pass-through
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and speaking of hardware a hardware-based kvm can be really
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expensive if you want modern features like
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4k 60 hertz support and it only allows
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you to control one of your os's
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at a time so then let's walk you through how we built our
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setup one of the big pieces of special sauce
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is actually the monitor this is the same lg
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43ud79b that we checked out back in september and we liked it okay at the
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time but we saw it basically as a big
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display a really big display at the time and we hadn't
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fully figured out what we could do with it so it's got four HDMI ports
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two 2.0 and two 1.4 then it also has
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check this out it's also got DisplayPort
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and a usb type-c for input
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and this is cool with four machines plugged in you can arrange those inputs
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in any order you'd like in quadrants
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like this effectively giving you four 21 and a half inch displays and then you
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can choose which one of them is going to output through the monitor speakers now
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if you want to focus in on one thing you can press the full screen button
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here pick whichever one you'd like press the button
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and boom you are switched to that particular input 4k
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60 hertz depending on which one it's compatible with and then if you want to
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switch back we'll just go to here we go picture by
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picture you can just apply the previous settings
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and give it a couple seconds to pick up all the different signals
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and you're going to be back to your quadrants now
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we haven't fully solved the problem yet but this is all the hardware we need but
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here's our here's our current issue our mouse is stuck in ubuntu right now
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because that is where it's plugged in
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this is where synergy 2.0 software comes
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in let's start with Windows the process is the same on both Windows 7 and
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Windows 10. download synergy 2.0 and install it then sign in to activate your
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machine once this is done you'll see a representation of the computer you're
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currently using in this case our arcade
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on the synergy 2.0 app next up is our Windows 10 machine this
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is basically the same procedure but once we're done our setup we'll see our
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arcade machine all ready and then we'll be able to arrange our Windows 10
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machine to line up according to how we've got our displays arranged but wait
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there's more moving over to the mac the process is
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actually just as simple open up the dmg double-click
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login and now we've got three but we're
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still missing the last piece of the puzzle Linux
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Linux can be a bit trickier for our ubuntu 17.10 install we have an easy to
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use deviant package but for those of you running distros that have switched to
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weyland by default like newer versions of ubuntu you need to make sure that you
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log in with xorg enabled otherwise it won't work it's easy enough to work
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around but just a little frustrating and here we are
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now i can do what i showed you in the intro so in this configuration watch
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this i can just move my mouse cursor between the machines seamlessly so over
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here i could uh i could get logged into steam but well okay i matched the enter
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key but you get my point the keyboard actually moves with the mouse so i could
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go to you know oh oh the website's still up
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and check this out copy pasting text between the machines is supported with
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copy pasting files and dragging and dropping files coming in synergy 2.0
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quite shortly and i think the most impressive
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thing is just how quickly and seamlessly the mouse
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switches between the different machines
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cool right a setup like this
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won't be practical for everyone and there are some caveats so let's say you
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wanted to take your macbook with you and you unplug it it does take a moment for
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all the screens to sync up when something you know disconnects or
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reconnects and our ubuntu machine has a
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bit of a tendency to grab the mouse controls even when it's
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not the focus machine but i think there are people out there
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with work areas that are only big enough for a single monitor who might have the
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need to run multiple machines simultaneously like this and for those
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people even with some of the improvements that still need to be made to synergy 2.0
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there is potentially a lot of time and
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effort to be saved here
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but uh Linus i heard on your forum of all places that
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while synergy 2.0 might be prettier with
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brain dead simple setup it's still missing some of the features of synergy
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one and there's no downgrade rights
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yes yes you did hear that so did we
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and so did seamless so while seamless has been working on bringing back the
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much requested tray icon and an on off button which would be essential for a
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configuration like this so that when you full screen you don't have your mouse
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flying off the edges we worked out a deal with them
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where anyone who bought synergy one or
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two with our code the links below our videos
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will get upgrade and downgrade rights
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for free so you can use whichever
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version you prefer and then you can switch whenever you're ready
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bam so check out the link to synergy one or
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two in the video description to get their multi-platform peripheral sharing
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software today for 50 percent off thanks
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to synergy for sponsoring this video
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so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can press that button but if you liked it hit like get
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subscribed or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured we'll have the monitor down there we'll have
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synergy down there in the video description also linked in the
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description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our
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community forum which you should totally join