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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?"
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.