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?"

Comments

Re:With USB devices and a recent XFree86, no

[PurpleFloyd]

How would you hang more than one PS/2 keyboard off one machine anyway? I don't think I've ever seen any system that could do that, which is why I recommended USB (although serial mice would work just as well, now that I think about it).

Also, it seems to me that you wouldn't really need more than one textmode console, since you can run xterm/rxvt/konsole/gnome-terminal on an X-only KVM head. The only times you really need a real console are during bootup and emergencies, when two people using the system simultaneously wouldn't be a real asset.

Re:and then ?

[Pathwalker]

Could someone please clarify why 2 people on one bastard PC would be better than 2 people on two normal PC's with some Cat-5 between them

Software Licensing - or at least that's why I was asked to look into some bizarre korean multihead cards back in 1999.

At the place I was working at that time, they used some expensive software that was licensed per processor. If one user used the software on a dual cpu machine, 2 licenses would be checked out. If he was on a single CPU machine one license would be checked out. Multiple instances of the software running on the same machine did not check out any additional licenses.

The idea was, to stick some of these strange cards into a bunch of machines, and put the users who were in training on these boxes. The resule: 2 users per license, saving up some licenses for the people who needed to run the program on the multicpu boxes.

The cards were completey unsuitable, and burned out quickly, so the project never went anywhere.

Re:Might as well have a PC for each person

[mpechner]

I wrote my response to doing this in a business environment. Second OEM for the same machine. Illegal, welcome to club fed. Your a felon. Can you spell Butt Buddy. As for using linux, I try once a year. I take a linux machine and use it. OpenOffice - Give it another 2-3 years. Visio replacements - not bad for normal flow charting. Falls apart for UML. Outlook - The Ximian Evolution connector is a peice of junk. Even small companies use Exchange. POP does not do meetings. Project managment: Mr Manager falls apart once you get multiple levels. Accounting: even the small company using QuickBooks can't use GnuCash. WINE - still too buggy. VMWare - my work around. But this is for one person. You still need the Full legal retail copy per person of all your software. Believe me, I try. In the real world of most companies, you need office, you need windows. A big rule of IT, search for the software that does what you need, then buy the computer for it. Unfortunately, this means windows. If there was a meeting manager that tied in with an LDAP address DB, and worked under linux and windows, I'd do a happy dance. I'd have a real solution to purge the world of exchange.

Already done

[Yenya]

I use this setup for ~1 year now - two VGA cards (one AGP, one PCI), two keyboards (PS2 and USB), two mice (PS2 and USB). You need to patch the XFree86 server. More info here.

Re:With USB devices and a recent XFree86, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you just making stuff up as you go along?

PS/2 is most definately NOT 5V RS232. For one things, RS232 doesn't has two data lines, not a single bidirectional one, and no external clock. The bit period is between 60 and 100 microseconds, which means less than 19200 bits per second. I wouldn't call serial "high-speed" until you got well above 10 times that.