unity-design team mailing list archive

[Christian Giordano <christian.giordano@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paulo, it sounds like a very convenient trick, in some particular
contexts though. Like:

   - Schools in developing countries (probably the more sensible case,
   since laptops are quite popular in richer countries)
   - Homes with less mobility need (I guess your case)

Probably these use cases are not enough spread to have it as a top priority
for the distro, but I don't see why such improvement couldn't happen if
developed by people who feel closer to those cases.


Cheers, chr


On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 11:58 PM, pjssilva@xxxxxxxxx <pjssilva@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> 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
>
> --
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