David A. Bandel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 22:59:09 +0000 (UTC) > Eamon Caddigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> > Proper fast user switch would be such a killer cool app, I hope you >> > do it. >> >> I'd probably never do it alone. Instead: anyone else interested in >> this, please drop me an e-mail. If there's enough people willing to >> work on this, I'm sure we could have some code written soon. Mostly, I >> need help recognizing all of the potential "got'chas" that currently >> arise from running multiple Xsessions that we'll need to address. >> >> Work on the cool rotating rectangular-solid, textured with each >> desktop, can come later. ;) > > You know, you _can_ run multiple xdm (wdm/gdm/kdm, whatever-dm) sessions > similar to what I mentioned. You just need to add some lines for it in > /etc/X11/?dm/Xservers. You can even run logins from remote systems > (assuming you've turned on that feature, I believe now it's off by > default).
I'm not sure multiple *dm sessions would count as "fast user switching". Ideally, the user would still have a choice of running a display manager, and a single instance would handle the multiple displays. > So the only "problem" you need to overcome is how to avoid the clunky ><Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Fn> sequence, and that should be simple enough to code up. > It's just a key sequence passed to the VT manager that isn't first > intercepted by X or another program that has focus. Well, another problem I already mentioned is handling sound. I'm sure you can imagine what happens when you try running xmms when another user is running it on a different display. Ideally, the fast-user-switching stuff would take care of that, and other similar problems. Linux has always been a multi-user OS... on the console. Now it's time to extend this philosophy to X. > Necessity is the mother of all hacks (and kludges, too). I just don't > feel the necessity. In fact, I'd rather not my kids were changing VTs/X > sessions all over :-). I'll admit, I thought "fast-user-switching" was a neat feature in WinXP, but I wasn't *really* convinced until I saw it in action on Panther. Both implementations have several limitations, the flexibility of Linux could really let it shine. -Eamon -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
