Hello and good morning friends,

I have recently moved in with my girlfriend and subsequently merged her old computer into a virtual one on mine with VMWare. It works quite lovely, with one exception -- I now no longer find myself owner of my computer.

To remedy this, today to a nodding head I proposed adding another monitor, keyboard, and mouse. However, an additional computer seems pointless as I am rather sure X windows (xorg) can be configured in such a manner that TWO people can use the host computer on TWO different X sessions, with TWO different monitors each with its OWN mouse and keyboard.

Yet I've not seen this in my limited travels.

Surely this is an elegant solution compared to adding a second computer -- those spare cycles of a box running cold will be a trite power consumption to that of an additional machine, and in the spirit of geekdom, albeit slightly more complex, a more beautiful design.

So then, I ask not for a hand holding walk through how to do this; I'm no guru but consider myself able-bodied enough to contemplate a rough example somewhere and then extrapolate it for my hardware. I thank any and all who can find the winning google search that I have been hitherto unable to provide.

Thank you,

i think in order to do that you might need a "dumb" computer. or a not a full comp. but a partial comp that acts as a terminal. it has no drives, just a MB, PSU, keyboard, mouse, monitor, NIC.

then you can setup some kind of thin client so one of you can use the dumb terminal and the other the real one.

http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html

sweet. for future reference, it's called multiseat. (compare to multihead)

very nice. post how successful you are with this project. very kewl. i love that idea and might have use for it someday soon.

Look at 3D Multiseat

Very nice. It is also nice that you want to perform this installation motivated by geekness.

The funny thing is, it is not new. Unix was designed for this purpose already, and I have seen it on Unix computers in the 1990-ies.

Unfortunately mankind degenerated the next few years after that and a whole generation is lost believing that a computer can only be used by one person at a time.

Again the soundness of the ancient Unix design is demonstrated here.

jlinkels

Multiseat is now old.
Multiterminal is ancient.
New is 3D Multiseat:

The goal: to provide independent work 2-4 users on the one case without restriction in the use of 3D acceleration. With new, modern hardware.