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The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

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121–130 of 145 posts

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#122

One of the big remaining users of display switching is the military. When something important is happening on one screen, others need to look at that screen. The military wants switching so they don't get everybody jammed around the screen with the action and abandoning their own stations. Here's the current incarnation of NORAD HQ in Cheyenne Mountain.[1] Such switching goes all the way back to NASA during Apollo. T…

If the military needs to spend $1000 on a KVM switch, they won't bat an eye. That's not true for most of the rest of us.

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#123
post #79

Synergy ( https://symless.com/synergy ) may have had something to do with it.

Yep, that is what I use for the same usecase. There is really very little point to a hardware KVM at this point.

The remaining use case is when you want to share a monitor along with the keyboard and mouse.

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#124
post #103
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XRDS1CG/ref=oh_aui_deta... It seems to work fine although I haven't used it a huge amount.

This does not meet the requirements of a modern workstation by my or the original article's requirements. This is limited to 1080p. We're looking at 4k as a minimum.

There do exist some 4K and even freesync capable switches with USB3, I only know of the Level1techs ones

Single Monitor https://store.level1techs.com/products/kvm-switch-single-mon...

Dual Monitor https://store.level1techs.com/products/kvm-switch-dual-monit...

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#125
post #25

KVM switches used to be a huge and super important (and expensive) thing in rack server farms back when every rack or every few racks had a pull-out tray with a keyboard and a monitor. Technology moved on. First the tray and monitor disappeared with KVM-over-IP, which saved many trips to the server room. Then the KVM switches themselves disappeared, as manufacturers integrated out-of-band remote access into the serve…

At work, we have at least the first 30 racks with good 'ol VGA KVM's (no IP) and tray monitor/keyboard/touchpad, despite at least half of the servers having IPMI. Ain't going anywhere anytime soon. And no, no one needs 4k where a KVM belongs (which is in a server room).

I needed a 4k switch. I had a nice monitor and a Linux and Windows laptop. I used the Win laptop for gaming and the Linux machine for pretty much everything else.

Everything I tried was garbage:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/4k-uhd-kvm-switches-the-starte...

There are a few in the $500+ range I have not tried, but you are wrong, there are use cases for 4k switching. I mean, do you really want to have two 4k monitors next to each other when you could just have one for half the cost?

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#126
I read this "article", and a few comments below it - and the replies, and I am just wondering:

Who is this "Stanislav", and why are they being so grating on people replying?

I mean, I can understand disagreement and correction (ie, the whole "please re-read the article, your question was answered" or "the article already addresses this", etc) - but do they have be such an arrogant a about it?

It basically turned me off from reading further - or exploring the rest of the blog.

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#127
post #114
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for married couples!

Thanks for the pointer. I wasn't happy with my phrasing. I should have just referenced a dictionary. MW's sense d is what I intended to convey: > "a person with whom one shares an intimate relationship : one member of a couple" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/partner

I use that term because its gender neutral and relationship neutral. I find it irrelevant to a discussion whether we are married or not, or a member of the LGBT community or not. However I don't hide my gender or my partner's gender (ie. I use he and she forms due to practical reasons).

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At work, we have at least the first 30 racks with good 'ol VGA KVM's (no IP) and tray monitor/keyboard/touchpad, despite at least half of the servers having IPMI. Ain't going anywhere anytime soon. And no, no one needs 4k where a KVM belongs (which is in a server room).

I needed a 4k switch. I had a nice monitor and a Linux and Windows laptop. I used the Win laptop for gaming and the Linux machine for pretty much everything else. Everything I tried was garbage: http://penguindreams.org/blog/4k-uhd-kvm-switches-the-starte... There are a few in the $500+ range I have not tried, but you are wrong, there are use cases for 4k switching. I mean, do you really want to have two 4k monitors…

Does the 4k monitor have multiple inputs? If it does, then connect both laptops to different input channels and switch inputs on the monitor as needed. Then presumably all you would need is a USB switch for keyboard and mouse input.

I have often wondered why no one offers wireless keyboard/mouse combos with multiple USB fobs and a switch on the keyboard to change which fob it talks to.

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#129
post #113

My monitor has a KVM built in... http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-34-ultrasharp-curve... It has two USB ports that can go to two different computers, and then in the settings you can set it up so that when you switch from one input to another it also switches what the USB devices are connected to. There are 4 USB ports total on the monitor, and they switch from one device to the other. It's great, instead of…

well this monitor also can daisy chain another monitor. which is awesome per se, and actually the daisy chained monitor gets switched aswell. ( http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/35... ) but 800 bucks for a monitor :/ I've always looked at these dell monitors. but I never use a external monitor when I'm at home (laptop). But at work my boss would never pay for any of those.

I work from home. I bought it for myself because I like having the extra real estate. Best purchase I have made in a long time.

Also, I couldn't imagine two of these next to each other, 34" is very large!

Re: The Peculiarly Quiet Decline and Fall of the KVM

#130
I used to have a KVM to switch between my many boxes with many OSes. Now with virtualization, I have box with a few virtual machines. Now if I want to use windows, debian and freebsd, I don't have to switch between 3 physical boxes, I just have to switch virtual machine windows on one box.
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