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Multiple Desktop Users on a Single Machine?

Posted by Cliff on from the multiple-heads-why-not-multiple-consoles dept.

_Sharp'r_ asks: "I'm trying to design the least expensive way to make OpenOffice, email, and a web browser available to students in a new charter elementary school. In my past experience working with charitable computer donations, I can usually get three to four working computers out of five donated 'broken' computer systems, usually with plenty of monitors, keyboards and mice left over. I'd like to use one computer for multiple students by attaching multiple monitors, USB keyboards and mice. What drivers/OS versions support multiple local input devices and monitors that can be attached to a specific login session? Will this require virtualization? Is there a config I haven't found that you can use to assign these devices to specific ttys? Have you done this before?"

5 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Just run multiple XWindows by oliverthered · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You could run multiple versions of XWindows using different configuration files.

    In the configuration file you specify where the input devices come from and how you graphics card is setup so it should be faily easy to get one instance of X pointing to one KVM combination and one to the other.

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    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  2. Labor of love by mdsolar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This level of salvage is a labor of love. There is quite a lot of open box work happening anyway. I agree with yours and other posts that X11 is the way to go. There are a lot of schools that get junk as donations and this kind of creativity is something to be admired.
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    Solar power installed at no charge: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

  3. Server / Thin client by rlp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As an alternative, why net take the best parts and build a decent server, and then build as many thin clients as you can make. That way you can also lock down the thin clients and only have to maintain software on the server.

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    [Insert pithy quote here]
  4. Seems to work in linux too... by rbarreira · · Score: 2, Insightful

    According to that webpage, it seems to work in linux too...

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    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  5. Re:You have to wonder why this is so rare by Score+Whore · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You ever wonder what that DISPLAY environment variable means? :.? It's for having a single source of computing power with multiple displays used by multiple users. Back in the 80s when this stuff was being developed fast systems were still quite spendy. It made sense to spend half a million on CPU and RAM then stick six or twenty users on it. Now days it's mainly niche applications that take this approach.