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Re: [LUG] Running two independent instances of X (including two window managers) on one PC

 

Simon Williams wrote:
> Grant Sewell wrote:
>> I read something about this recently, although I have to admit I can't
>> remember where.  It was an article about having "greener" computers -
>> since most computers in use today are idling most of the time, why get
>> a computer when you could just use the 1 computer twice over.
>>
>> Anyway, IIRC one of the issues they had was getting X to respect only 1
>> keyboard per instance of X.  They had 2 Xs running and 2 keyboards
>> plugged in, and despite trying to tell X1 "only use this keyboard and
>> not that", it would still take input from "that".
> 
>> The article was a little old (c. 2005) so it may have been overcome.
>> As per Simon's advice, though, use 2 separate cards.
> 
> I think it required you to use a slightly different way of getting 
> keyboard events. Did require a kernel module at one point (I think it 
> was e-something), but looking at /dev/input I've got lots of event* 
> entries, some of which are for the keyboard so I think you just use 
> those directly.
> 

I had a bit of a play with it last night, I managed to get the two 
independent desktops working with two video cards (and also one dual 
head card but the screen updates were a bit sluggish) but the keyboard 
wouldn't work.

I'll probably have another go this weekend.  I did find that two video 
cards caused the machine to lock up.  I presume that even though the 
motherboard supports dual video cards (to increase 3D performance) it 
might not like running them as two separate cards.

Rob


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