On Sat, Sep 07, 2019 at 12:23:38PM +0000, ghost wrote: > Someone on #debian@oftc suggested that only users with a "session" get access > to all hardware, but I have no idea what it might be. Any help is appreciated.
"Seat" and "login session" are concepts introduced by systemd-logind to indicate whether a user is logged in on the physical machine console, rather than, say, ssh-ing in from Singapore. See <https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd-login.html>. The basic idea here is that if you want access to the local machine's hardware (accelerated video drivers, audio, etc.), you'll want to login on the actual console. Don't use xhost[1] to grant some other user account access to the X server, as that won't put it in the same "seat" as your real user account. [1] I really should stop that sentence right there. If you want both users to be logged in simultaneously, press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get to tty2, login as the new user there, and do something like "startx -- :1" to start a second X server for the new user. Otherwise, log out of the first user and login as the new user. (If you haven't already done so, I suggest installing some *lightweight* window manager for the secondary user. You probably don't want to give them a full Desktop Environment session.)
