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Comment by strobe | Hacker News Reader

I thought about that in different angle - does it possible to use a second linux laptop as external monitor for a mac. I've tried few similar streaming solutions without investing much in tuning and creating proper wire connection and as result my initial impression was that is too much latency issues (as well with some additional issues related to creating a virtual screen), but probably with your approach I'll try again. Thanks.

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You should be able to adapt the writeup to a macOS host, but I have no idea how you configure a virtual display on it

one easiest solutions that I found is mac app BetterDisplayPro - even free version allows to create the Dummy display.

Barrier will let you use your mac’s keyboard and mouse on the second linux laptop. Depending on your use case that might be good enough. I actually prefer this as I can avoid opening YouTube etc on my work laptop.

it actually very good setup for some cases and I've worked in similar mode for a while using by usb switch device with single button - but I found that is little bit too painful because in may cases to move something from one machine to another is required unexpected 'extra' step which in lot of cases breaking usual productivity flow in worst moment.

With barrier you just move your cursor between screens (or use a hotkey). It also shares the clipboard so it’s perfect for opening up a reference webpage on the second system.

I'm using a capture card to use my Macbook monitor as a screen for my PS4 when I travel. You could use one to turn your Linux laptop into an external monitor.

hm, that really nice solutions - what capture card do you have?

I’ve done this the opposite way round, using a cheap USB C capture dongle from Amazon to capture output from an RPi and then using my a Mac as a virtual screen for the RPi. I do this occasionally when I need to setup something but don’t want to drag out an external monitor.

The capture card/dongle are designed for using in Twitch game streaming where you are using it to capture the output from a game and feed it into something like OBS. The one I have was pretty cheap, but only supports an output resolution of 1080p (input up to 4K). I don’t remember the exact brand, but the above should give you enough keywords to get started.

Elgato HD60X: https://www.elgato.com/en/game-capture-hd60-x

There are cheaper options if input lag isn’t an issue.

I know many Windows laptops support Miracast (both as source and as sink) for wireless display transfer.

I think Apple has developed its own Airplay protocol, though. There are Airplay sinks for Linux, so if you can find a way to share a screen over Airplay the setup shouldn't be too bad, especially wired.

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