Hello, I would like to make a suggestion: make multiseat configuration easy in Ubuntu.
Since I am not sure that this is the right mailing list to post this idea I am going to try to keep the email relatively small. If I should wirte somewhere else please let me know. First I need to explain what is multiseat: it is the ability to use a single computer to run multiple sets of screen+mouse+keyboards+other-peripherals. The reason for this is that today computers are usually much more powerful than what is needed by a single person most of the time. Then by heaving multiseats you can share the same computer with more the one person, like your wife, your son, or a co-worker. Each one will have their on set of screen-mouse-keyboard so from their point of view they have the computer for themselves. You can get more information at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MultiseatX The only special hardware you need to add is an extra video-card (even if a USB variation), plus the screen, keyboard and mouse. This is already possible right now, but it demands manual configurations of files like xorg.conf and lightdm.conf (there is currently a bug in lightdm but old versions work fine), pulse/daemon.conf and even fixing some permissions in /dev/dri. There are also some small problems I could not solve like allowing both seats to mount usb drives (in my current setup only the first seat is able to control pluggable devices, cdroms, etc). I do think that proper support for multiseat would be a killer feature for Ubuntu. Whenever one of my friends come to my place and they look at my setup they all look amazed craving that their window machine could do the same. Right now I can not really tell them to try Ubuntu to get this feature as it is very complicated to setup and can be easily broken in an update (like right now it is broken in Precise). If this change our friends much find a very compelling reason to try Ubuntu. best, Paulo Obs1: If needed I can write a long email (or update the wiki) with details on how is my system configured so you can give it a try. Obs: I have found out that fedora is trying to push for easier multiseat configurations with a special USB device that works as a video card. Maybe we can cooperate with them: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/multi-seat http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=plugable_multiseat_kick&num=1 -- Paulo José da Silva e Silva Professor Associado, Dep. de Ciência da Computação (Associate Professor, Computer Science Dept.) Universidade de São Paulo - Brazil e-mail: pjssi...@ime.usp.br Web: http://www.ime.usp.br/~pjssilva -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~unity-design Post to : unity-design@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~unity-design More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
