Hello all, I’m looking for a switch/kvm for my home setup. ive been through a few tries and none of them have worked for one reason or another.
I have two machines,
A windows 11 work laptop
- USB-C out, both USB and display port.
- HDMI out
- USB 2.0 out
A Ubuntu based personal server
- Displayport out
- USB-C out (no Displayport)
For displays, I have a single double wide 4k monitor
Additionally I have a USB-C hub all my peripherals are connected to.
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I wanted something similar from a remote company I was working for. They were pretty good about fulfilling requests, but when I asked for a good kvm switch they said they had trouble in the past and instead recommended a usb hub that can toggle between machines. Then connect both machines to the same monitor and toggle the input. Not ideal, but low cost and functional. Might not suit your needs (would be annoying if you have to frequently toggle back and forth), but if you’re just trying to share your desk space between a work machine and personal, and the monitor input is easy to toggle, it’s worth considering.
That is what I do. I have owned like 4 kvm switches. Even when I paid extra to get a “good” one they never lasted more than like a year or two. My USB switch has been going for about 3 years. Occasionally it glitches out and I have to unplug it from everything but it’s only about every 3-5 months
What model do you use?
This one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/966237-REG/iogear_gus404_4x4_usb_2_0_peripheral.html
I’ve had it about 4.5 years now.
I picked up one of these ugreen displayport KVMs a couple months ago and so far have been happy with it:
https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Displayport-Support-Monitor-Keyboard/dp/B0CFFFHFJT
The only issue I have had is that if I’m switched to computer B and computer A goes to sleep, I cannot wake it up through the switch. This was not a deal breaker for me because I have easy access to the power button of both computers. I wonder if this issue may be resolved by powering the switch with a USB-C power plug, since it otherwise requires USB power from both computer connections.
Awesome :) does the input support display port over usb-c or will i need an hdmi to displayport adapter for the windows laptop?
I’m using this as well and came in to recommend it. One machine is thunderbolt to DP. One is DP to DP. Both Windows machines and both work well. I used this cable https://a.co/d/diTREUK however I’d look for a higher DP/thunderbolt revision now.
I don’t believe that the USB-C ports can take video input, so you would most likely need to use either and HDMI to DP or USB-C to DP adapter.
Tbh, just run the Ubuntu box headless and ssh into it. You can do anything you’d need to. Even better, swap it to Debian or something like that, because Ubuntu is unfortunately kinda undergoing gradual enshitification lately.
Make sure that, whatever switch you want to get, the switch supports simulating output (edit simulation/storing) and USB devices. Otherwise every switching action would cause disconnect and connect actions on the hosts.
One of them is a laptop, why ssh to the server isn’t an option? Set up tmux on the server so it always connects to the same session, so you can just continue where you left last time. If you need desktop support, rdp in gnome works really well.
E.g if you connect with this command, and tmux is installed on the server, it will start a new session named “main”. If a session with that name exists it will connect to that:
ssh -t pi@192.168.1.2 tmux new-session -A -s mainAdd something to .bashrc on the server to always do the same if you work on that phisically:
if command -v tmux &> /dev/null && [ -n "$PS1" ] && [[ ! "$TERM" =~ screen ]] && [[ ! "$TERM" =~ tmux ]] && [ -z "$TMUX" ]; then tmux new-session fiI do plan to primarily ssh into my box but I’d still like plain old physical access, particularly while I get things like tailscale, DNS, and a reverse proxy setup.
Id also like to make sure my work PC and home PC are completely segregated for legal reasons, but I plan to to ssh into it from a different laptop anyway.
Use WSL on the laptop for ssh, that’s actually a VM. VM separation should work correctly, or we have a much bigger problem. Just reset WSL, everything should be wiped related to the ssh sessions. Work IT would maybe allow that.
Note that some issue devices have VT-x disabled and the bios locked down by Corp IT for one reason or another, so a VM may not actually be possible from the work issue device here.
I’ve been very happy with my Monoprice “Blackbird 4K DisplayPort 1.4 USB 3.0 4x1 KVM Switch, 4K@60Hz, HDR, YCbCr 4:4:4, HDCP 2.2”. I run an ultrawide at 3840x1600 @ 144 Hz, or HDR at 120 Hz, G-Sync both, and it works wonderfully. It took some effort to get all the required devices using the same connections - went through quite a few “USB-C to DP” cables from Amazon that had to be returned because they couldn’t do the high refresh like they claimed … but once I got everything set up, it’s worked like a dream, 3+ years and counting now I think.
