Recommend a KVM or Switch
Recommend a KVM or Switch
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.
I have this level1techs KVM which can drive my 5120x1440 @ 120hz monitor (without DSC) AND my 3840x2160 @ 240hz monitor (also without DSC). It's $450, but Wendell and level1techs are great and it's well worth the price.
I'm running Fedora on one host and Ubuntu on the other. With Windows, you can use DSC to drive huge resolutions at 240hz.
This!! Wendell is the best! He actually started designing his own KVMs because the ones on the market didn't have all the functionalities/support.
All decent DP KVMs are very expensive. I got an IOGEAR which is a rebranded Aten. It was also in the same price range. Who knew high resolution needs high bandwidth and high bandwidth signaling and switching is hard..
I tried a USB KVM switcher. I only recall there were serious issues and it didn’t last long.
Now I use a high quality USB dock and physically unplug/re-replug a work and personal laptop. That’s been a simple and reliable solution.
For my home server, I ssh into it.
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
Anything that can do better than 1080p is insanely expensive or cheap and flakey. I gave up looking and just got a new monitor with a KVM built in.
Most have one USB-C with 65w+ PD which includes the keyboard and mouse and then add 1-3 more slots that have HDMI and/or DisplatPort + USB-A for the keyboard and mouse.
Keen to know what you've tried. Or if anyone has found something good that isn't silly expensive or cheap and dodgy.
Yeah that's what ive been seeing as well, but honestly its hard to look up products and be sure they are real in the AI age (ironic, right?)
Currently I'm using my company supplied Dell WD19TB which I cannot recommend as it needed service already and doesn't support Displayport in from my server. Before that I was using the built in one on my monitor, which so far is my best option but I was looking for a discreet box due to the monitor arm cabling.
The HP G5 thunderbolt docks are (currently, at least) pretty stable IMO, provided the firmware is up to date on it.
NOT the hp g4 thunderbolt dock, that one the team I'm on is at a level 3 support ticket with HP for monitor issues that render my laptop basically unusable.
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.
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.
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.
I have a similar setup and in the end just went for a cheap chinese („ESKEVE“) 4x HDMI 2.0 KVM switch that supports 4K60. No problems except HDR does not work properly, which is not useful on my monitor anyway. Laptops are on USB-C docks with HDMI 2.0 out, PC uses a passive DP to HDMI cable.