> > how hard would it be to add more keyboards and mice to XFree, each > > delivering events to a different screen, thus enabling a full local > > multiuser setup? Is there any reason why this couldn't be implemented? > > This question has come up every month or so as far back as I can remember. I > even joined this mailing list to ask this very question...
Well, that might mean that there is interest in it and so someone should finally do it! :-) (Yeah, I know, talk is cheap. I won't be the one to do it, I'm afraid... XFree internals are a mystery to me.) > 1) You can't have to VT's being displayed at once. This means you can't run > and see two seperate X sessions on two monitors. This is a limitation of the > linux kernel - and as far back as I can remember ppl have said "someone is > working on it" but I wouldn't hold your breath... I don't think that's the real problem. If it were, it would suffice to simply remove any VT handling from XFree, which has been done - see the webpage mention in the other reply in this thread. But that hack has other problems, see my other message. I think a better way would be to use only one instance of XFree, have it handle multiple monitors (that already works just fine!) WITHOUT Xinerama, and add more event queues, each for one screen/user. And of course, add support for multiple (USB) keyboards (at least two solutions exist) and multiple mice with one cursor each. > 2) You could not go through the kernel and instead attempt to access the video > card manually or through the frame buffer or something smart - and some has > done this, and posted various patches.. although that still only allows a > max of two heads. I don't quite understand what you mean by this, but again - I don't think this is the problem, multi-head support is already working. (Maybe not for all cards, though.) > 3) You could use something like Xinerama (sp?) to have one desktop but over > multiple monitors. That's not what I want - I want multiple independent desktops. > 4) You can have more than one mouse, but currently you can't have more than > one cursor on a particular X server. Right - this would have to be changed. > I think this is because of a limitation > in the actual X protocol - if so, don't expect this to be fixed any time soon > either. I don't think the X protocol has anything to do with it. Isn't the multi-screen support much like two independent X servers already? How closely coupled are screens :0.0 and :0.1? The protocol is the interface between the client and the server, and in that respect, I don't propose any change: the client would still be seeing only one cursor, but depending on which screen it is attached to, it would be one of the existing cursors. > 5) It is hard getting many monitors on a machine simply because the cables > aren't that long! The longer you make the cable, the worse the image gets on > the monitor. I think you can get round this by using LCD screens - but can't > remember for sure. This may be a practical problem in some cases, and no problem at all in other. Think classrooms, internet cafe's... Many monitors (and computers, needlessly) stacked one right by the other, very close. > 6) A nicer way of doing all of this is simply to have lots of very cheap nasty > machines with nothing but a mobo, CPU, ethernet card and monitor - then get > one big server to control them all. See the linux terminal server project. Nicer? I don't think so. What's cheaper, smaller, easier - a VGA and a monitor, or a case, power supply, mainboard, CPU, memory, ethernet, the electricity it eats, the noise it generates, the cables it needs, a VGA and a monitor? Of course, both solutions have their merit... If you need distance more than just a few meters, certainly the terminal server is the better/only solution. Vaclav Dvorak [EMAIL PROTECTED] IDAS, s.r.o. http://www.idas.cz _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
