unity-design team mailing list archive

["pjssilva@xxxxxxxxx" <pjssilva@xxxxxxxxx>]

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: pjssilva@xxxxxxxxxx         Web: http://www.ime.usp.br/~pjssilva