Synergy has worked well for me over the last couple days, but setting up the connection (although not difficult) required a few steps that I’ve tried to streamline.

The following setup is based on a synergy configuration similar to the following.:

section: screens
desktop:
laptop:
end
section: links
desktop:
right = laptop
laptop:
left = desktop
end

BTW, desktop and laptop are arbitrary names I’ve selected for clarity.

Automatically start the synergy server after logging in to gnome on the “desktop” computer to which the mouse/keyboard is physically connected as follows: