What am I supposed to do with all this?
"This is not a good idea"
I can do it! "No you can't"
Help! It's too much!
Hi! Hey puppy! I love you!
Who's a good puppy?
Is any of it funny? "I don't know!"
Greetings and welcome to another exciting episode of Veronica Explains!
I'm Veronica, and today I'd like to show you a neat tool called Barrier,
which I use when I need to work with multiple computers on the same desk.
I discovered this tool when I was a new mom
employed doing remote development work in a Windows only environment.
My employer at the time required everyone to use a Windows machine and there were no exceptions.
So I had to use their Windows laptop on my desk, in addition to my preferred Linux machine,
and the MacBook I used for my then burgeoning freelance work.
You can imagine, this was frustrating.
I use one of these trackball mice because that's just who I am as a person,
and sharing this mouse between three computers was not fun in any capacity.
Not to mention I'd be typing and I would forget which keyboard controlled which computer
it was all sorts of kitty wampus.
There were of course wired switches that could allow
me to use a single external keyboard and mouse.
Those are called KVM switches, which shouldn't be confused with the kernel-based virtual machines
which help you run an OS inside your OS.
Feels cheap!
No, these hardware switches are named for the fact that they allow you to share a keyboard,
video, and mouse. The fact that they're named like a popular virtualization platform
doesn't at all confuse us when we're trying to google how to solve a problem at 6 pm on a Friday!
These KVM switches work ok... but they're unsightly when you're dealing with tons of
laptops which are supposed to be portable anyway.
Plus the cheap ones often only support vga monitors,
so if you want to use one of these with a DisplayPort or HDMI monitor, you're going
to be forking over a lot of money - for a bunch of clutter - just to try and save some sanity.
Enter Barrier!
Barrier is an open source software-based KVM switch replacement, and it is super neat!
Barrier was forked from an earlier open core project and when I got it all configured
my life as a multiple laptop user became much easier to handle.
Instead of physical switches or unplugging my keyboard and mouse
all the time, I was able to have three different computers on one desk,
all sharing the same keyboard and mouse. No muss, no fuss!
So let's learn how to install and configure Barrier on four target systems.
My four target systems for today's shenanigans will be:
1. Linux: Linux is awesome after all!
As is the custom in these parts, Linux will be the main server for our Barrier installation.
The physical keyboard and mouse will be plugged into this machine,
which is running Pop!_OS 21.10: in beta at the time I'm recording the video.
2. Windows
Windows exists after all, and I'm imagining it's the most common
example you all will be dealing with in your personal and professional lives.
3. macOS
Apple preloads this operating system on their hardware,
and only their hardware, which is kind of a weird design choice.
You might run into this operating system from time to time so I've included it here.
...and 4. ghostBSD
Yes, you heard me right! I'm a huge fan of the BSDs for all kinds of uses and the
folks at ghostBSD have put together an awesome operating system which is worth your attention.
If you want me to take a deeper dive into this fantastic OS
or the BSDs in general, please let me know in the comments!
To get started with Barrier on Linux, you're first going to need to install Barrier on Linux!
Now when you go to the Barrier website you'll see that it's already packaged for many distributions
and there are simple instructions on the Barrier website to help you get started.
In my case I'm using Pop!_OS which uses Flatpak for app distribution.
If you can get Barrier on Flatpak, I highly recommend it.
Note that at the time I'm recording this video there are some known issues running Barrier
on Wayland, and so you might run into some issues getting things to work.
Your mileage if you're a Wayland user may vary.
In order to configure Barrier as a server we have to check this box next to
"server: share this computer's mouse and keyboard"
Now here it does a handy thing of telling you the IP address
you're going to need- that's the IP address for your server and I find that to be extremely
useful when you're connecting multiple devices together using this software.
Now, for now, we're going to skip the configuration,
I'll show you how I do that at the end when we have the other devices set up.
When we're ready to go we select "start" but I'm going to wait on
that for a little bit while I configure the other devices.
In Microsoft Windows you're going to have to go download the Barrier program from
the official GitHub because Barrier is not available in the Microsoft Store.
You can use your favorite search engine to find this software,
but the url you're looking for is GitHub.com/debauchee/barrier.
From here, we need to go to the "releases" option, scroll down,
and then select the current version of the Barrier software- that's that "exe" file.
I save the file and then open it in order to run it.
If you've ever installed Windows software before you already know how to do this part.
[Do I already have it installed?]
Once you get the software installed, you can see right here that it gives
you a screen name and it tells you the IP address of your device. That's going
to be very important when we connect them all together, as I mentioned when we set up Linux.
Next, we'll install Barrier on a macOS system.
Now note that you're not going to find the Barrier program in the App Store,
much like we didn't find it in the Microsoft Store.
To get the application, you'll need to open up your browser of choice,
then go to the same GitHub we used to download the Windows version.
We're going to that same page, the releases page.
Now, we'll be choosing the Mac version instead of the Windows version.
I open it in "Disk Mounter", and then for some reason I have to open an "Applications" folder,
and then I drag the Barrier application into the Applications folder.
Now, unfortunately, it's going to need a little bit more work in order to get going
on a Mac because of the security permissions.
The first time you run it, it's going to say it can't be verified,
and it's going to offer to send it to the trash. Don't do that.
Instead, open it by right clicking it, and then selecting the "open". Here, it's going to say
"we can't verify the developer, are you sure you want to open it", and we should say "open".
Then it's going to start requesting the permissions that it's going to need-
in this case I believe it's going to need "accessibility features"
as well as "screen recording and capture".
So, every time it asks, we'll open the "System Preferences",
and here I'll have to click the lock to make changes.
Note you may need to type your password once you do that.
Then, we select the check box next to Barrier. Then you run through the installation prompts.
In this case, we're going to be setting our Mac up as a Barrier client,
because we're going to be using Pop!_OS as the server.
Now, before we actually get everything connected again, you'll want to make note of the IP address
here, because that's going to be very helpful as we're working through these things together.
You'll also want to note the screen name in our case,
because this MacBook pro belongs to my wife Jacqui, it says "Jacqui's MacBook Pro" here.
If you're in the market for a BSD, this is a good one to check out. Let me know, again,
if you want me to do a deeper dive video on this, because I think this looks fantastic.
Anyway, to install the software, we have to go into the "administration" tab and
then hit the "software station" from the software station package manager.
Simply search for "Barrier".
I believe that an older version of Barrier is shipped in the FreeBSD repos.
Anyway, you select the option, and you hit "apply".
From here, you'll have to confirm the changes, and then let it run its course.
Once Barrier installs, you can open Barrier in the accessories tab.
Much like the other ones, it's going to prompt you whether you want to use this
as a server or client, and in our case, we're going to select client.
And here, again, we'll want to make note of the IP address and the screen name.
Both of these will come in handy when we're configuring all four of them to work together.
[electronic indie music]
Greetings!
Am I ridiculous? "of course"
[Minnesotan "ope"]
Okay well it did work. At least I think it worked.
[excitedly] Look at that!
Okay so I'm able to move the mouse from here, if you look at the mouse pointer you can see it's
in the Pop!_OS, and then now it's over in Windows.
I can type "hello there" and now I'm gonna bop on over to ghostBSD...
Oh look at me, I'm over in ghostBSD now!
How about this, we should we should try some browsers.
I don't know if you can tell but I'm a little giddy.
We're going to get ridiculous, so let's try the copy and paste.
I'm here in ghostBSD, and I'm going to copy this url. And I am going to paste it into my Mac.
And it didn't work.
This is ridiculous.
Here I'll grab this one, let's see if copying from Mac works.
Start that video, and then over in Windows... let's see if I can paste it in.
And it worked, so copy and paste seems to be working
from Mac to Windows with Linux in the middle which is super neat.
Okay here we go, we're going to listen to myself on four different computers.
[assorted Veronicas]
[sarcastically] This was worth doing.
Okay let's let's put a stop to this. Go away Lance Boyle.
I also showed that the copy and paste worked, we're going to try another thing.
I'm going to pick a url.
I believe it's eff.org, and I'm going to test this
to see if if we can copy this url to the other devices.
So we're copying first from ghostBSD over to Windows. Look at that!
Now we're going to copy from ghostBSD over to Linux. Look at that!
And now, last we're going to copy it to the Mac. Totally didn't work.
I think there's a chance they don't have the shared clipboard working on the Mac yet.
You know, I thought this was going to take a bit of time but getting these
four computers connected together, but it was actually really easy.
As you can see,
Barrier is a fantastic tool for running multiple computers with a single keyboard and mouse.
I use this tool constantly to declutter my desk,
and I think it's worth your attention as yet another fantastic tool that runs great on Linux.
And why wouldn't it? I mean Linux is awesome!
And so are you.