 operating systems which one's the best is it Windows 7 macOS Windows 10 Linux well we figured why decide we built the ultimate cross-platform workstation running all four of them off of a single display and seamlessly check out that mouse movement between the different OS's and this was thanks to some help from our friends at Synergy who sponsored this video so stay tuned because we're going to show you guys how to do it alright so let's go over what we've got here first up is our computers so this one right here this glass tower has our arcade machine PC running Windows 7 and there are a lot of reasons that you might still want an older version of Windows up and running after you've upgraded to something new maybe it's older hardware provides better compatibility with older software especially games that don't play nicely with Windows 10 maybe it's just that you need Windows 10 for work or school but you really love Windows 7 and its telemetry free styles next up we've got our Windows 10 PC now Windows 10 supports 4k Netflix with the built-in edge browser it's got DirectX 12 for the latest games and of course pairing the newest hardware with the most current operating system often gives you the best driver and accompanying software experience now let's change gears a little bit this is our MacBook Pro maybe you moonlight as a DJ and you prefer the professional audio tools or peripherals that work best or only on Mac maybe you love Final Cut maybe you love the tight integration with your iPhone and your Apple watch there are a ton of reasons that you might want to have a Mac as part of your ultimate setup so we worked it in bringing us finally to a little mini Intel Nook this one right here is running Linux Ubuntu to be precise so maybe you're a programmer who needs to be able to quickly compare different OS build side-by-side maybe you're a data scientist who works primarily in Windows but then needs to keep tabs on a Linux machine without SSH or an X maybe some of your tools just plain run best on Linux so overall the point we were trying to make there wasn't the specific reasons but just the fact that there are a lot of reasons that you might want to run multiple operating systems and while there are a ton of ways to go about this actually all of them come with some significant drawbacks so a dual boot solution like boot camp requires a system restart to switch a team viewer introduces significant network latency and reduced image quality parallels or some other kind of virtualization solution gives you limited access to hardware pass-through and speaking of hardware a hardware based KVM can be really expensive if you want modern features like 4k 60 Hertz support and it only allows you to control one of your OS's at a time so then let's walk you through how we built our setup one of the big pieces of special sauce is actually the monitor this is the same LG 43 ud79b that we checked out back in September and we liked it okay at the time but we saw it basically as a big display a really big display at the time and we hadn't fully figured out what we could do with it so it's got four HDMI ports 2 2.0 and 2 1.4 then it also has check this out it's also got display port and a USB type-c for input and this is cool with four machines plugged in you can arrange those inputs in any order you'd like in quadrants like this effectively giving you for 21 and a half inch displays and then you can choose which one of them is going to output through the monitor speakers now if you want to focus in on one thing you can press the full screen button here pick whichever one you'd like press the button and boom you are switched to that particular input 4k 60 Hertz depending on which one it's compatible with and then if you want to switch back we'll just go to here we go picture by picture you can just apply the previous settings and give it a couple seconds to pick up all the different signals and you're going to be back to your quadrants now we haven't fully solved the problem yet but this is all the hardware we need but here's our here's our current issue our mouse is stuck in Ubuntu right now because that is where it's plugged in this is where synergy 2.0 software comes in let's start with Windows the process is the same on both Windows 7 and Windows 10 download synergy 2.0 and install it then sign in to activate your machine once this is done you'll see a representation of the computer you're currently using in this case our arcade on the synergy 2.0 app next up is our Windows 10 machine this is basically the same procedure but once we're done our setup we'll see our arcade machine already and then we'll be able to arrange our Windows 10 machine to line up according to how we've got our displays arranged but wait there's more moving over to the Mac the process is actually just as simple open up the DMG double click log in and now we've got three but we're still missing the last piece of the puzzle Linux Linux can be a bit trickier for our Ubuntu 17.10 install we have an easy to use DB in package but for those of you running distros that have switched to Wayland by default like newer versions of Ubuntu you need to make sure that you log in with XOR enabled otherwise it won't work it's easy enough to work around but just a little frustrating and here we are now I can do what I showed you in the intro so in this configuration watch this I can just move my mouse cursor between the machines seamlessly so over here I could I could get logged into Steam but well okay I mashed the enter key but you get my point the keyboard actually moves with the mouse so I could go to you know oh oh oh the website's still up and check this out copy pasting text between the machines is supported with copy pasting files and dragging and dropping files coming in synergy 2.0 quite shortly and I think the most impressive thing is just how quickly and seamlessly the mouse switches between the different machines cool right a setup like this won't be practical for everyone and there are some caveats so let's say you wanted to take your MacBook with you and you unplug it it does take a moment for all the screens to sync up when something you know disconnects or reconnects and our Ubuntu machine has a bit of a tendency to grab the mouse controls even when it's not the focus machine but I think there are people out there with work areas that are only big enough for a single monitor who might have the need to run multiple machines simultaneously like this and for those people even with some of the improvements that still need to be made to synergy 2.0 there is potentially a lot of time and effort to be saved here but Linus I heard on your forum of all places that while synergy 2.0 might be prettier with brain dead simple setup it's still missing some of the features of synergy 1 and there's no downgrade rights yes yes you did hear that so did we and so did seamless so while seamless has been working on bringing back the much-requested tray icon and an on-off button which would be essential for configuration like this so that when you full screen you don't have your mouse flying off the edges we worked out a deal with them where anyone who bought synergy one or two with our code the links below our videos will get upgrade and downgrade rights for free so you can use whichever version you prefer and then you can switch whenever you're ready BAM so check out the link to synergy one or two in the video description to get their multi-platform peripheral sharing software today for 50% off thanks to synergy for sponsoring this video so thanks for watching guys if you just like this video you can press that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured we'll have the monitor down there we'll have synergy down there in the video description also linked in the description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join