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Rob Beard wrote: > HI folks, > > When I was playing around with Kubuntu at work on one of our new Dell > PCs (Pentium D 820) I got wondering something. Would it be possible to > run two desktops at the same time on one PC? > > Now I know there have been products in the past that provide an extra > video output, keyboard, mouse and sound for Windows, but I wondered if > it could be done cheaply on Linux? > > What I was thinking of was... > > Standard PC (say a average sort of spec Pentium D or Athlon 64) with an > ample amount of memory (say 1GB). > An extra video card (say PCI 128MB Radeon card or similar). > An extra sound card (PCI cheapo sound card) > A USB keyboard and mouse and extra monitor. > > I wondered if it would be possible to run two copies of X and Gnome/KDE > etc on the one PC so one user is on the main monitor using the main > keyboard/mouse/sound card and a second user is on a second monitor with > a completely different desktop using the second video card, USB keyboard > and mouse and extra sound card? > > I'm thinking something a bit like LTSP but one one machine? > > Is it possible to have more than one USB keyboard and mouse on a PC and > then specify which one is used for input? > > If it is possible then I dare say it is another opportunity to put some > of these high powered desktop PCs to a more cost effective use. > > Rob I have regularly thought about this, but never actually got around to testing it out. You can certainly add the appropriate entries in your X config, you'd need 2 of everything mind... two mouse entries, two keyboard entries, two GFX card entries, two monitor entries, two "Screen" entries and two ServerLayout entries. You can definitely start a second X session easy enough... from the CLI. I regularly do. At a CLI, if you type "startx -- :1" (without the "" marks) then it'll load up another X session locally. If you wanted to start it on the second set of devices, then you could use "startx -- -layout OtherDevices :1" *should* work (if I've read the docs correctly). Making it do all this automagically on a "normal" distro is, however, going to be a touch more complex. Presuming, of course, that you want a login manager such as GDM to start on both screens. Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html