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I have a laptop and a desktop, bothof which I want to share a keyboard and a mouse. Only one will be on at a time, but I have some female --> 2 male usb cables. I was hoping they would be preferable for ease of use when switching between the two computers. I tried the setup, and so far it work, but only with my laptop, which is running linux. When I do the switch over to my windows desktop, it power is in the devices (caps lock and the mouse light up), but the actual devices won't work. Thank you so much.

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    That's not how USB works. Those USB split cables you describe only split the power, there's no way for a USB cable to split the data between two different USB hosts. What you really want is called a `KVM switch`. – MarkU Dec 24 '16 at 21:30
  • Or more simply a USB switch, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FEM3OKM –  Dec 24 '16 at 22:33
  • @duskwuff Interesting.. you should give the title in case the link ever went down. That "Tek Republic TUS-200 USB Sharing Switch - 2 Port Manual Switch One USB Device/Hub Between Two Computers" Is interesting... A related thing is a KVM switch, many now might support USB.. so that would work. And a related thing to that is a reverse kvm switch, allowing multiple consoles(keyboard monitor, mouse), for one computer.. But the device you mention looks very much to be the thing he's looking for. – barlop Dec 25 '16 at 19:58
  • Here is an explanation how it is (should be) done, http://superuser.com/questions/1128633/is-there-a-difference-between-these-types-of-usb-switches/1128638#1128638 and another example, http://superuser.com/questions/1128622/pc-switcher-for-usb-hubs/1128632#1128632 – Ale..chenski Dec 25 '16 at 21:26

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