Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 17:37:10 -0500 From: Eric Kjeldergaard <kjelderg@gmail.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Powerbook Setup Message-ID: <d9175cad0410201537a3ddd85@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <200410201141.19130.jhb@FreeBSD.org> References: <16710656779.20041018233408@synchron.org> <200410191520.19743.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <31210910-224A-11D9-8991-0030657EDEB2@attglobal.net> <200410201141.19130.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:41:18 -0400, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote: > On Tuesday 19 October 2004 11:43 pm, David Scheidt wrote: > > On Oct 19, 2004, at 2:20 PM, John Baldwin wrote: > > > desktop use.) Oh, and "switch user" from panther. My wife and I > > > often share > > > the same FreeBSD + KDE machine at home and when I'm not using a laptop > > > we > > > have to keep logging out to let the other person use the machine. > > > Having > > > switch user for KDE would be very, very nice. > > > > Not as nice as switching users, but it's possible to run more than one > > instance of an X server on the machine. > > > > startx -- :1 > > > > will start X on the next available vt, and call it display :1. I'm > > sure xdm can be made to run on it with not much effort, if you feel the > > need for that. > > > > Hitting ctrl-alt-fn is not quite as nice as picking a name out of a > > menu, and there are some resources wasted. For two people, on a modern > > machine, it should be quite fine. > > I'm aware of that (we are using kdm, fwiw), but using multiple displays is a > hack and not as intuitive as switch user. It also doesn't scale well. For N > people you have to have N kdm instances running. Perhaps I'm out-of-place in this assumption, but for large N, isn't it time to get a second machine or perhaps log out? The quick switching of graphical desktop isn't done in a particularly comfortable fashion in any of the desktop environments that I have used (and yes, that includes Win and OSX). I understand the desire to keep applications running and have a second or maybe even third user use the system at the same time, but I think with kde's state saving and screen, most things get figured out easily enough. I certainly wouldn't dislike a project, either a kde-type project that implemented user switching or (What I would actually really like) something like screen that would work for X applications, but I don't know that it's much of a priority. You could pretty easily add something to your kmenu that says switch users, looks for existing kde apps, prompts you, and covers up for the multiple X server hack. I've considered doing this (and may still), but I'm pretty lazy sometimes and got my wife a separate machine. If you wanted to do the last suggestion, which would implement pseudo fast-user switching, I'm sure projects like BSD and KDE would love to see the results. A simple combination of terminal-switching commands, screen lock, and a prompt that looks for running kde instances (or even X instances for multi-desktop environment setups) wouldn't be /so/ hard to toss together. -- If I write a signature, my emails will appear more personalised.
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