Hardware recommendations for multi users on the same machine.....

budword · 02-21-2009, 12:04 PM

Hi, I'd like to have 3 or 4 monitors/keyboards/mice set up to use the same machine, simultaneously. All at the same table, right next to the box itself. Each user would get use just one monitor/keyboard/mouse, and log into their own account. This will be a computer set up for kids, so they don't each need their own, or need to take turns.

Any suggestions are appreciated....

Thanks much...

David

frieza · 02-21-2009, 12:20 PM

well i would say a quad core processor of some nature would be almost essential to such a setup, albeit it would work without but having 4 processor cores to share the load of 4 simultaneous users would be a tremendous benefit

i would reccomend a quad core phenom of some sort
as for ram, 2-4 gigs should be adaquate

and before anyone says such a configuration is impossible i've seen it done at my public library

michaelk · 02-21-2009, 01:36 PM

Just search for multiseat linux and you can find several howtos including the following. I disagree that a quad core would be essential.

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

budword · 02-21-2009, 02:57 PM

Now that's more what I had in mind. I was more worried about needing some special hardware to handle more than one set of keyboards....

Now my question...I am almost certainly using either the latest ubuntu, or JEOS which is based on Ubuntu server 8.04. Now, as I understand it, X is configured without using xorg.conf now. Which is supposed to be easier. Which really means, easier if nothing goes wrong, much much harder if stuff does go wrong. So what is it that configures X now ?

That link will help a lot I think... so thanks much michaelk. This box will be used by kids to run learning games like gcompris. So dual core will be more than fine I think...

Any other ideas are much appreciated...

theYinYeti · 02-21-2009, 02:58 PM

I disagree too. Humans are so much slower than the CPU that they account for nothing. Dual-core is well enough for having a sense a responsiveness even under some load.

Here at home I often launch some heavy processes on "sedentaire" (such as video post-processing) and leave that in background while my wife switches user to start her own session, and then (I only have 1 screen on this PC) I remotely connect using SSH to browse the web, program, check mail...

Yves.