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FourHead: One PC, Four Users
LoganGD writes "A reseach group from UFPR university in Brazil, C3SL has managed to make one Linux box run four terminals at the same time. That means four mice, keyboards, displays and users with just one CPU. The way they managed to do that can be found at the FourHead project webpage. The fact that one computer science laboratory can suport up to 60 users whit only 15 PCs is really attractive for low-resource groups and countries."
I wonder what, if any, heat issues would come from running 4 video cards, and the cpu at relatively full power, in a seemingly normal sized case. I would imagine it would get pretty toasty(or very loud with all the fans running, think of the poor power supply!)
I would be interested to see how they handle it!
Where's the economy in this? The "box" (cpu/ps/hdd) is relatively cheap compared to the display. I guess every dollar/peso/dinar counts.
Wasn't this what Unix (and/or its predecessor, Multics) was designed for?
~ Aero
For terminal services server to work, you'd need one computer for the TS server, and four computers each with their own operating system for this to work. So to get the same result with Terminal Services, you'd need atleast 4 (one of the computers in use is also the terminal services server) and ideally 5 computers.
It's not like the graphics cards are going to be pushed to the limit - I mean, the CPU wouldn't cope with them all playing ut2004 at the same time. :-) So they shouldn't be generating all that much heat, couple of case fans should cope with it no problems.
As for the noise, it'll still be quieter than 4 separate boxes.
I don't think anyone could argue that these create massive amounts of heat. What heat they do create can easily be exhausted by a case fan.
This is definitely a setup for an environment where people are literally running on a shoestring budget. This is a really nice ability, and I'm glad someone has done it.
Its just damn plain cool.
Ok, so by the time you spend all of the time and effort to do all of this, you could deploy a fully self contained thin client in what, 10 minutes?
The only way I see this as a good idea for any low budget organization is if they get donated lots and lots of monitors, keyboards, mice and computers with graphics cards for this project.
" Mainframes used dumb terminals"
Not always. The IBM 3270 architecture (I think it had another name as well) could use graphics terminals with high resolution rendering, mouse etc. Quite a bit of local processing could be done.
Actually just a monitor, mouse and keyboard would have to rate as a dumb terminal. Even acsii terminals had some intelligence for cursor positioning etc.
Also known as a console.
TCO depends a lot on wages vs. hardware/software costs. If the wages are high, it can make sense to spend more money on hardware/software if that causes less downtime and less work for the adminstration. But if the wages are low, work-intensive solutions with slightly more downtime can become acceptable and have a lower TCO in the end. In countries like brazil I wouldn't be so sure if the TCO of a LTSP is really lower.
Not unlikely hardware is more expensive than in the US and the wages are a lot lower for sure. And students are working on these PCs, so downtime is almost free. I believe such a four head solution also provides better response than a LTSP installation. Video playback and similiar stuff should be possible on a four head installation.
Jan
Most of the time, your PC sits idle while it waits
for you. Every now and then, you sit idle while you
wait for the PC.
Now get a 4x faster PC, and share it 4 ways.
Very seldom will all 4 users need the CPU at once.
So, nearly all of the time, you'll get better
performance. When you need the CPU, most likely
the other 3 users are reading, thinking, chatting,
drinking, picking their nose, or whatever. The
fast hardware is all yours.
dude, there's like 5ms max latency over a lan. if you double that, that still gives you 100 frames per second. I don't think you need any more accuracy than that...
sig? uhh, umm, ok
Could it be that windows doesn't support multiple monitors? No.
Or that it can't support 4 different users on them (as opposed to 1 user getting a big display)? Probably not, at the very least, it would be hackable.
Maybe it can't support multiple keyboards, or mice? Again, the most it would need is some hacking.
Or maybe, just maybe, if you posted a webpage, telling someone how to use a single windows license for 4 users, M$ legal would go apeshit on you, and stomp you into a tiny, tiny greasestain?
BINGO!!
I figure that buses would be a bottle-neck. PCI is far less than ideal for 3D gaming, and with four cards, the problems get much worse still.
I love C++
Well, this would be comparable today to giving a bunch of users accounts and allowing them to use telnet or ssh to get to a shell account. In a setting like that, I bet your average computer today would support hundreds if not thousands of simultaneous users. With X terminals, I bet you could have a bunch of gui interfaces too.
This is a lot different than that - this is about taking an interface that has been designed assuming there is one user in front of it, and hacking it to support multiple users. Multiple keyboards, mice, and displays on one box, don't normally work this way.
Cool? yes... Practical? probably for someone... but in a world where people hack web servers onto commodore 64s and overclock their Sega Genesis, rank this toward the top of the list.
While the Linux system might be difficult to maintain, it can be done.
.dotfiles, and it Just Works.
... re-formatting every PC in the office, re-installing c:\winnt32\, removing IE, 'fixing the e-mail system', installing new Virus patches, etc. will now be free time you can apply to actually customizing your -one computer office system- to the task of your business, easily, and maybe learn a few Open Source skills on the side, as well.
...) focused on computerizing his/their business process, paired to a single cheap PC that 4 people can be using at the same time, is good Starter Business Manna ... put a smart business app on a Single PC which is dead-easy to maintain (hint: it just runs), make sure Single PC is cheap, and it works, and you've got a 3rd world economic power-station.
... whereas having everything 'local', on a single system with sufficient power (RAM) to cater to the needs of busy people, is entirely feasible, and cuts out a -lot- of the reasons for most modern PC maintenance ...
Every user gets their own session, their own homedir, their own
Once this is set up, and X is running, its done. No maintenance. Multi-head is actually "X" and Unix at its greatest.
Put OpenOffice.org on there and you've got what you need to run the average office, for whatever business.
All that time you're wasting now, in the "difficult to maintain" department, you know
An Apache/PHP/MySQL-based business app being developed by an enthusiastic software hacker (it could be the whole group, with their own PHP scripts
Think of the rows and rows and rows of low- to middle-class businesses you can see in any average big-city, and now add a small, affordable computing system that -4 people can play with at once- in each box in the row.
Most people buy multiple-PC's for the office just so that they can have access to a 'broader computing system' that they then try to tie together with all kinds of other bone-dead 'systems' like 'shared Access databases' and whatnot, over some network (which requires even more hardware and maintenance)
Its gotta get easier to multi-head PC's. It just does. The single-user hardware paradigm needs to be shifted. Microsoft -need- new licenses from new 'complete system' hardware to propel their buggy OS, whereas Linux only -needs- you to use it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --