Multiple Desktop Users on a Single Machine?

_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?"

Comments

Just run multiple XWindows

[oliverthered]

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.

Labor of love

[mdsolar]

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.
--
Solar power installed at no charge: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Server / Thin client

[rlp]

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.