multihead / dual input howto (two local users, keyboards etc.)?

[Tomasz Chmielewski]

Tiago Vignatti schrieb:
> Tomasz Chmielewski escreveu:
>> BTW, I tried the multiseat live CD from 
>> http://wiki.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiseat/index.php/Live-CD
>>
>> I like its hardware detection (press F1, left mouse to activate this 
>> screen).
> 
> Indeed, it's nice.
> 
> Now a question: is there a reason to keep your howto alive in the Web 
> given that it doesn't show anything in special or different compared 
> with the others? It will just confuse the poor users.

Let's see what the other options are:

According to http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/Multiseat 
we have the following pages with "Users" in mind:

1) http://wiki.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiseat/index.php/Mdm

mdm is a nice "feature preview", even with a live CD, but just no major 
distro ships it. And if a major distro doesn't ship some software, it 
just doesn't exist in a Linux world.
Livecd had some flaws as I tested it:
- resolutions were not detected properly and I couldn't change them 
(even xrandr was showing that 1024x768 is the only possible one)
- the system didn't reboot as I told it to; it was hanging somewhere at 
the end waiting for something.

These are minor flaws, and perhaps not even mdm related.
What I didn't like about mdm is that it doesn't ask if it should really 
shut down or reboot the machine if there are other users logged in (for 
example, KDM does that, it is nice IMO).


2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat - wikipedia article.
It's a good explanation, but it won't configure your Linux desktop to be 
a multiseat station.


3) http://www.ltn.lv/~aivils/?proj_id=multiseat&menu_id=1 - as big fat 
words say, "DONT TRY THIS!", so let's just not go there.


4) http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree-Local-multi-user-HOWTO/ - "very old 
documentation. DONT TRY THIS! It is here just for historical purposes". 
OK, so another antiquated documentation. I actually tried to read this, 
well, but yes, I agree with "DONT TRY THIS" words now.



So what did we have there - nothing usable for a mere mortal, rather 
scary words that multiseat should not be used.


Let's look here now:

http://wpkg.org/Configuring_multiseat_X_workstation

It's far from being perfect, but at least:
- does not tell you you have to patch and compile your brand new 2.4 
kernel, because otherwise, multiseat is not possible
- doesn't tell you to install a modified XFree86 server
- is easy to follow and will work for majority of users who ever edited 
their xorg.conf in the past


So sorry, but if anything's confusing the poor users, it's that 
wiki.x.org page that lists old documentation which is even not 
applicable today.
Or did you mean, there is some other documentation listed elsewhere? I'd 
be glad to hear about it.

Of course, the whole discussion would be unnecessary if the distros 
shipped a tool - other than a text editor - for configuring multiseat; 
but so far, I don't know any distro that does (despite numerous user 
requests; perhaps not enough though).


-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org