My desktop is not really odd in any way nor are my peripherals except I use a cutting board as a mouse pad. It cost a small fraction of what a large mousepad would have. I thought this was odd enough to mention here.

These days, I don't think you really need a mousepad unless you're still using a mouse with a ball in it.

(Those old mice were annoying because, quite often, dirt would get into the ball mechanism, and the dirt would make the mouse pointer not move as it should when moving the mouse.)

My desktop is not really odd in any way nor are my peripherals except I use a cutting board as a mouse pad.

While true that most modern optical mice seem to work well on just about any surface, my mouse is a laser mouse and really finicky.

There's a program called Synergy that does this which I've used before. In my case though, I have multiple mice/keyboards plugged into a single PC. :) The primary use case for this is to have independent input devices inside of some virtual machines.

But yeah, for multiple PCs setup it is good to use a KVM or something like Synergy for sharing a single set of input devices between multiple computers. I had a setup like that from 2003-2011 or so but haven't needed that for a while now. I think Synergy went all-commercial also, but is still probably the best tool for that type of setup.

Just checked and, yes, that was exactly what he was advertising for.

The dude BTW was the host from UDF tech.

https://symless.com/synergy/features

Yes, I'm a card carrying member of the 16:10 Master Race™ LOL It's one of (although not the primary) reasons why I haven't moved to 4k yet also. There are only very few 16:10 4k displays on the market and they're made for very high end professional used and priced through the stratosphere. Hopefully once the other concerns I have with 4k are resolved several years from now they'll have 16:10 units available more commonly for professional use like the 1600p displays I use currently (Dell Ultrasharp).

(In case anyone is wondering what those other concerns are with regard to 4k, it has to do with the GPU requirements to get 60fps+ performance consistently across multiple 4k displays. Not viable with even the best current hardware but another generation or 2 from now from Nvidia or AMD should cover it I suspect, it's not too far off).

The displays are all connected to a single PC currently but spread across 2 AMD Radeon GPUs. I've got the 30" displays connected, 1 via DisplayPort, another via miniDisplayport, the third connected to the 2nd display via DisplayPort MST (daisy chaining) which I was surprised worked on such an old Radeon card, and beyond manufacturer stated specs at that too! The older 24" displays are connected via DVI-D to the 2nd Radeon card. Finally the TV is connected to the 1st GPU via HDMI. The GPUs are pretty pushed to their limits with regards to outputs.

In the future when I get a new GPU I'm going to lose all of the DVI connectivity sadly, so I'll probably have to retain one of the Radeon cards to push those 2 displays still, but that should be fine. No desire to spend extra money on ancient hardware to get converter cables, display hubs or other technologies, but would be nice to keep the displays working in a useful manner as long as they still work. Eventually I'll probably add one 4k display to the top middle, and perhaps 3 of them and retire the 24" displays... Depends on how tech moves over time, prices and whatnot. I'll likely drive them all using DisplayPort MST as the modern GPUs all support it now and most high end displays do also.

My arrangement is:

[24"] [24"] [ 65" Toshiba ]
[30"][30"][30"] [ Television ]

I also periodically have another computer or 2 hooked up to all of this on secondary inputs on some of the displays, so while they're all wired to one PC, some of them are occasionally simultaneously wired to another PC or 2 also.

Yeah, it's been around for quite a long time now and was originally open source which was when I used it. I stopped using it when my need for the setup was no longer though. Nowadays I mostly use secondary computers over the network via ssh or VNC on rare occasions when I need it, or temporarily switch my displays over via multi-input, but it is infrequent.

Synergy was a great solution to this problem though, but you do need separate monitors per PC still.

There's also barrier, which was forked from the last open source version of synergy, and is what I use.

Incidentally, the virtual monitor setup on my setup is a bit counter-intuitive:
* On the right is the main display, connected to the Raspberry Pi.
* To the left is a smaller display (that is physically to the left), connected to my old desktop. (Reasonable so far...)
* To the left of that is the main display, connected to the desktop, and physically to the *right* of the smaller display I just mentioned (and the same monitor the Pi is connected to, just with a switch).

I've (finally!) finished ordering parts for my new desktop, and will need to work how to fit that device into my setup. (Can't just drop-in replace my old desktop; old desktop has HDMI and DVI (both in use), new desktop has HDMI and DisplayPort, no DVI (but does have VGA).)

By the way, anyone using VGA with an otherwise modern setup?

Thinking of getting a physical KVM as well.

(Not to be confused with KVM in the Linux kernel, which is a virtual machine hypervisor, something completely different from what we're talking about here.)

There's also the affordability issue with such a setup, particularly seeing what GPU prices are these days.

(And power consumption, of course.)

ssh is only suitable for command line access, unless you combine it with something else, like VNC or X forwarding. (It's great at what it does, however; there's a reason it's standard on servers.)

VNC doesn't work well for things like GPU intensive applications. Also, latency makes this unsuited for real-time gaming.

Furthermore, neither ssh nor VNC will handle the situation where the OS doesn't boot in the first place, or if there's some problem during boot-up. (My new desktop is going to have that issue at first, as the storage device I got for it is, I believe, blank; it needs an OS installed to be useful.)

By the way, I noticed that:
* It's common for modern cases to not have external drive bays. (Probably due to the decline of optical media?)
* There are some interesting things you can put in a drive bay. I'm considering possibly getting USB-C there (motherboard has a USB-C header, but case doesn't have USB-C, and the motherboard doesn't have USB-C in the back), but there's also the rather interesting idea of getting a drawer for that, allowing small things (like extra screws or small cables) to be stored inside the computer.

I have one DVI port among my devices, and it's connected to a DVI to HDMI cable, which in turn is connected to an HDMI port (I believe it's connected to the switch connecting to my bigger monitor).

As I've mentioned, I've been using barrier, which was forked from synergy's last open source release, in my setup. It even works on the Raspberry Pi.

Instead of getting another monitor, you could use an HDMI capture device and essentially capture the output into another computer's input. It doesn't work that great with the cheap USB 2.0 capture card I have (and there's noticeable lag), but it can work if you don't have anything better, and higher end HDMI capture hardware is available.

Or, you could use an HDMI dummy plug to make the machine *think* there's a monitor connected, then use VNC to view the display remotely, while still using barrier (or a physical keyboard/mouse) to control it.

Now, whether these setups are actually useful is an interesting question, but at least these setups are *possible*, and someone might find that it works for them.

Do the physical and virtual arrangements of the monitors align? (In other words, when you move the mouse pointer off one monitor, does it move to the display that would make the most sense based off the physical arrangement?)

(Also, doesn't this arrangement take up a *lot* of space?)

used, with an adapter. I don't remember any specifics any more but i remember the need to be aware of the type of connectors. Also the adapter was fairly expensive, almost 20 euro's, but it worked

The right side of the left displays are aligned and the left side of the right displays. The display orientation with respect to each other is proper for how they're physically aligned, including the TV which when powered is far right of the right side 30".

Yeah, they displays take up a humongous amount of space. The 30" displays are just under 7 feet wide roughly and are angled slightly inwards towards me. The top displays are angled towards me as well but are about 3-4" further away slightly behind the bottom displays, basically they're sitting on top of angled full tower cases on each side. I just measured it and the top of the top displays is 41 inches (around 105cm) above the desk.

Sometime this year I'm building a 3 legged motorized desk that will be 8 feet wide and slightly rounded front and back with rounded corners to stack it all on to have more space, ergonomy, and flexibility overall.

These are probably somewhat unusual:

The trusty old SB Live! sound card that has been in all of my PC's so far.
A Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro joystick from around 1996.
IBM Model M keyboard from 1988.
An SC-55mkII for those mid-90's retro games.

These I didn't think were that unusual but others have mentioned similar:

1080p monitor, maybe ten or so years old. The first flat screen I ever got.
A Blu-Ray/DVD/CD drive+burner. I even find use for it sometimes.

Regrets:

While my motherboard is "only" about 8 years old, it no longer has a floppy controller. If it did, I'd probably still have 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives, because why not. Had in its predecessor.

What waffle you speaketh...?

Outside of the obvious use of Linux for gaming, there are still a couple oddities with my main computer:
- I use a 5:4 (1280×1024) screen as my main gaming screen. I added a secondary 16:10 (1680×1050) one for games that are too messed up when using non-wide resolution, but I prefer the experience of the 5:4 screen.
- The keyboard is using a PS/2 port, not a USB one (it’s probably one of the oldest parts of this computer, with the 5:4 screen).
- There is no fan on the case, I removed it because of some strange noise and never found the time/motivation to put a new one instead.
- My gaming computer happens to be a server too: e-mail, Web, XMPP, GitLab and a couple other things. It is obviously not the smartest choice, but I never bought dedicated hardware for a server so everything ended up on my main computer.

Setup I used for a bit, particularly while playing GOG Skyrim:
* Display with HDMI switch
* Attached to one of them, my Raspberry Pi 4, connected to keyboard and mouse
* Attached to the other one, my "big" laptop. Not connected to keyboard and mouse, but connected to a controller for playing Skyrim.
(Note that Skyrim does need keyboard input when naming your character and when renaming items.)

I am expecting to get a mini PC in a couple months, which may end up being my main gaming machine for a while.