Lightmorphic Flow 0.6.1

Beta. Install this one. It fixes a fault that could leave the computer you are sitting at frozen, with its mouse and keyboard held.

What went wrong

Everything bound for the other machine was sent on the same thread that reads your mouse. When the other machine stopped draining the connection, that send waited for ever — and it waited while your keyboard and mouse were held. The result was a computer frozen solid, still holding the old mouse and too stuck even to notice a dongle being unplugged and plugged back in.

Four guarantees now

• Everything is written by a thread of its own. The loop that reads your mouse never waits on the network, and a machine that stops keeping up is dropped instead of being waited for.
• If the other machine goes quiet for six seconds, the pointer comes home by itself.
• Any edge of the other screen brings the pointer back, not only the one you crossed by, corners included. Being stranded is far worse than crossing back early.
• A watchdog: if the loop that reads your mouse stops turning for four seconds, everything is let go, whatever the reason.

A panic key worth remembering

Press Escape five times quickly. Nothing to hold down, nothing to remember. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K still works too.

Each of these is covered by a test, including one that hands the sender a machine which never reads anything.

Installing

sudo apt install ./lightmorphic-flow_0.6.1_all.deb

More at flow.lightmorphic.com.