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Multiple Users and Multiple Inputs on One Machine?
BozoForPresident asks: "Not long after seeing a dual monitor setup for the first time I thought how useful it'd be to plug in another keyboard and mouse for a second user. That $4000 dual headed laptop (reported on Slashdot on Sunday March 16) becomes a more viable purchase when you add a couple of USB keyboards and mice for an additional user. Microsoft will never do it but how difficult would it be to make Linux handle 2 (or more) streams of input and direct them to their respective windows?"
PS/2 is PS/2 is PS/2; you can plug two PS/2 mice or two PS/2 keyboards into a standard machine, diddle with the drivers to tell them about the alternate IO and IRQ addresses and you're away. You cal also get multi-PS/2 port adapters and a lot of the "high-speed serial port" adapters are close enough to 5V RS232 (which is what a PS/2 port is) to work.
That's not the problem. PS/2 keyboards (all keyboards by default) are routed through the console driver. Hit a key on any keyboard, it goes into the console. There is no way to distinguish which keyboard it came from. You cannot have multiple console drivers (although I believe there is a patch for it). You can, however, tell the console not to bind the USB keyboards, leaving them free for XFree86. Later versions of XFree86 are able to deal with USB keyboards directly (don't recall whether you need a patch or not) rather than through the console.
Not sure if Xfree86 has been fixed yet to not treat all scroll-wheels on each mouse as one, but as at about a year ago, it didn't distinguish. If it has, this here AOpen Optical OpenEye Wheel Mouse model O-35G is about to become multi-talented.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This question was asked on the Linux kernel mailing list a while ago. The response was (from memory):
Yes, you can have 2 keyboards, mice and video cards in a single PC. And you can run 2 instances of X on different virtual consoles. But, there can be only one active VC at any time, and it's hard to change that limit.
The conclusion was that it would probably be easier and cheaper to set up an X terminal.
WWTTD?
You haven't been marked at troll yet, so I'll tell you why this is a great ask slashdot post. It boils down to the fact that not everyone knows as much as you, or about what Linux can do for them. It would seem to me that if you could answer this poor guy's question, instead of trying to make yourself sound powerful and mighty, the world just might be a little better place to live. If you don't think what I'm saying is true, then check out the little culture of open Source Developers. And if you don't believe in the Open Source philosophy, then why are you wasting your time with Linux anyway? Why don't you just use some other UNIX? Please stop the high and mighty crap. No body cares that you have more geek'sperince, and the people who might care, can't because your to busy trying to tell them how stupid they are. There was a point in time that you didn't know about serial terminals. There was a point in time where you got introduced to the concept.
Have a nice day.