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The Fine Print: The following comments
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Re: Multi-Head, Multi-User Killer GNU/Linux App Languishes
by John on Thursday October 09, 2008 @ 09:06 PM
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I'm running Hardy Heron and Fedora atm and working on a Solaris machine. I think I decided on computers rather than medicine because computers won't sue if you undergo exploratory surgery in order to satisfy your curiosity.
Installing from the command line could be misleading. It's less about the command line and more about shutting down X. It just happens to be that when you close your shell, all you have is a command line.
Before you begin, make sure you've removed the precompiled nvidia packages you may have installed using Synaptic or similar programs.
First go to nVidia , download the linux drivers and use Synaptic to download the Ubuntu kernel source libraries. You may need those. Then stop gnome. From the resulting command line run the nVidia installation package. Follow the prompts. You may need to provide the path to the source files. When the install package completes, restart gdm. Then, backup your xorg config and run the nvidia utility that was installed during the driver install.
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Re: Multi-Head, Multi-User Killer GNU/Linux App Languishes
by SPM on Friday October 10, 2008 @ 07:52 AM
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I presume you are talking about multi display (Xinerama) rather than multi-seat (which requires multiple USB keyboards and USB mice as well as multiple screens and multiple USB headphones for sound all connected to independent login sessions. This requires a lot more than just installing nVidia drivers, and I can confirm that there is no easy or reliable way of doing this. In addition to make this all worthwhile, you need at least 4 to 6 seats per PC, using low cost embedded dual head displays like the nVidia 1650 with one or two more nVidia 1620 PCIe cards. This necessitates use of both VGA outputs on the nVidia cards by independent seats, which nVidia drivers don't support - you can only achieve one seat per PCI ID (ie one seat per card) with the nVidia driver configuration capability although you can get two displays per seat. There is a way of setting up to get more than one seat per card - using a nested XServer or Xgl http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=707796 but none of these are glitch free and have issues like mice and keyboards getting mixed up, and after looking at the issue in detail from a commercial point of view, I concluded that it just isn't economically viable to provide these kludged multi-seat capabilities for PCs in libraries, schools, hospitals etc. because of the maintenance cost and complexity unless the XServer (and sound server) are modified to properly support multi-seat.
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Re: Multi-Head, Multi-User Killer GNU/Linux App Languishes
by John on Friday October 10, 2008 @ 08:15 AM
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I was referring to multiple display setup and configuration. As for running six users off of a single machine, I don't understand the point. The only way I can imagine doing so would require virtualization, which invites inefficiencies and complications. Besides, after providing each user input devices, a graphics card, and two displays, it just makes more sense to go ahead and give him a CPU and network card. The cost of the CPU and motherboard sufficient to operate as a thin client would be only about $60. A thin client configuration makes more sense to me under those circumstances.
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Re: Multi-Head, Multi-User Killer GNU/Linux App Languishes
by SPM on Saturday October 11, 2008 @ 04:15 AM
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No, it doesn't require virtualisation any more than multiple thin clients do - Linux is an intrinsically multi-user OS out of the box. The only issue is that X only normally supports one local display although it can support any number of remote displays in the form of remote sessions on other PCs or thin clients.
A multi-seat setup is the same as a multi-user thin client setup, except you just pay for additional graphics cards instead of thin clients. It is theoretically cheaper for public computing where you can have say 6 seats for the price of 1 PC, plus a little extra memory and half a dual head card (about $25 extra per seat on top of the cost of the average PC), compared to $100 per seat for a thin client solution. In practice though the complexity of setup and maintenance and flexibility in placing the clients makes thin clients a better option in most applications.
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Re: Multi-Head, Multi-User Killer GNU/Linux App Languishes
by Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS on Friday October 10, 2008 @ 06:26 PM
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It is actually multi-seat that I am seeking. It should work well for our space and budget requirements. -- IV
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Re: Multi-Head, Multi-User Killer GNU/Linux App Languishes
by SPM on Saturday October 11, 2008 @ 04:44 AM
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I have tried this, but I have found that in practice, the cost of selecting a suitable motherboard, graphics cards and configuring and maintaining such systems offsets the cost gain in hardware. You have to pick the hardware carefully since PCI cards are becoming more difficult to obtain, and so you ideally need a 6150 class integrated graphics HTPC motherboard with dual monitor output, with two suitable PCIe slots for two cheap 6200 class dual monitor graphics to allow 6 seats, without going to SLI or hard to get PCI graphics cards which will destroy the concept of cost gains. The setup is also likely to break often with OS updates which means high maintenance costs.
At the end of the day, I found it not worthwhile for commercial provisioning compared to thin clients http://www.ewayco.com/0-embedded-systems-prod-pages/vx-thin-client-embedded-system.html or ultra cheap sub $200 PCs http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614 because labour is a lot more expensive than hardware. It is also less flexible because the VGA cables have to be short.
You can try a proprietary product which does work
http://www2.userful.com/ but it isn't glitch free and I don't believe it provides two seats with two headed nVidia cards, and those that it does support for two seats per card are expensive or difficult to get hold of. This means 2 or 3 seats only per PC. Also it isn't glitch free, although it is vastly easier to set up than the do it yourself approach.
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