Fast User Switching under RedHat 8 / Gnome2

[Retro2001]

Hi. Is there anyway to accomplish fast user / desktop switching in the style of WindowsXP Pro under RH8 / Gnome2? Thanks.

Peace,
will

 

[Abzstrak]

start to x sessions and just ctrl-alt-FX to each one? that should work fine, and would be alot faster than XP's..... seems silly though, just share a desktop, its really not that big of a deal.

EDIT: Fast user switching in any way is REALLY a waste of RAM... the more I think about it the more stupid it sounds

 

[bsobel]

Fast user switching in any way is REALLY a waste of RAM... the more I think about it the more stupid it sounds

Ram is cheap and the convienece for multiple users is high, so why is it stupid?

Bill

 

[Retro2001]

The multiple sessions with CTRL-Fx was my thought, but I can't seem to make CTRL-Fx do anything under RH8. Is there a special flag somewhere to enable that?

Peace,
will

 

[Bremen]

When you're in an X session you need to use Ctrl-Alt-Fx. Although I have to second other thoughts... why would people be needing to switch users all that much anyway???

Anyway, if you want multiple X sessions under different users you'll have to specify different virtual consoles. By default it uses :0, for the second X session 'startx -- :1' then :2 etc

 

[Abzstrak]

I can see how it would be convient if they were accessing them remotely on seperate systems, but to have all that ram wasted instead of simply sharing the same desktop seems stupid.... At the very least, just use use one workspace and have the other person use another and just go back and forth between those...

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Abzstrak
start to x sessions and just ctrl-alt-FX to each one? that should work fine, and would be alot faster than XP's..... seems silly though, just share a desktop, its really not that big of a deal.

Never tried it, but I think you'd need to specify something about connecting at a different $DISPLAY - I know X will complain if you just try to start up multiple invocations. May not be possible at all directly through X, though - I think that it's designed to allow only a single X server to run per machine, though that server can connect to many clients. (Remember the terminology sounds backwards...).

I remember seeing something in GDM about this, however. Have you tried poking through the menus? IIRC, there was some option like "switch" or "log in to another user".

 

[Abzstrak]

it'll work fine, just write a seperate XF86Config for the second sessions and use it, there is no reason it wont work... your second config can have whatever resolution and stuff the other person wants......

but two X servers wastes memory....

 

[n0cmonkey]

Are there really any benefits to "fast user switching"? It sounds like (and I have never touched it so I have no real clue) it just allows another user to login quicker than normal... Is the login process really all that slow? 😕

(I just want to know what the benefits, especially technical, are to "fast user switching")

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Are there really any benefits to "fast user switching"? It sounds like (and I have never touched it so I have no real clue) it just allows another user to login quicker than normal... Is the login process really all that slow? 😕
(I just want to know what the benefits, especially technical, are to "fast user switching")

It's not logging in, its switching between users. On NT/2000 the first user must log off before the next user can log on. With FUS, I can switch from user 'a' to user 'b', but while I'm on user "b's" desktop, user "a's" programs continue to run. So say I have this web page open, quicken running, and some other software and my wife comes to check her mail. She hits a hotkey and is on her desktop with her applications, I can hit a hotkey and switch back to me. It is extremely usefull when sharing a system (or when developing when you might want to test software as another user with less rights)

Best,
Bill

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Are there really any benefits to "fast user switching"? It sounds like (and I have never touched it so I have no real clue) it just allows another user to login quicker than normal... Is the login process really all that slow? 😕
(I just want to know what the benefits, especially technical, are to "fast user switching")

It's not logging in, its switching between users. On NT/2000 the first user must log off before the next user can log on. With FUS, I can switch from user 'a' to user 'b', but while I'm on user "b's" desktop, user "a's" programs continue to run. So say I have this web page open, quicken running, and some other software and my wife comes to check her mail. She hits a hotkey and is on her desktop with her applications, I can hit a hotkey and switch back to me. It is extremely usefull when sharing a system (or when developing when you might want to test software as another user with less rights)

Best,
Bill

Thanks, that explains it. I guess it could be useful if you only have one computer...

 

[cleverhandle]

OK, a bit more...

Again, Abzstrak, it's more than just defining configs for different users. If you just straight out try to start x with one instance already running, you'll get an error like "cannot connect to display 0" . Try it if you don't believe me...

You can get multiple displays running, though, with

startx -- :1

That starts a session that seems to use my ~/.xinitrc. But things are a little weird. My fonts and my GTK theme are different in the second instance... not sure why. Could be that the first invocation creates a lock file of some sort. Might be OK with different users - maybe I'll fiddle with it tomorrow. Personally, I'd be reluctant to use this with GNOME - I worry that something would break.

 

[Nothinman]

If both users are trustworth you could just use seperate desktops, pretty much ever DE and WM on Linux supports them. It's not really the same thing, but it's close and it's fast.

 

[manly]

Yeah you can run multiple X-Windows instances on one host, locally. Just specify a "display"; as already mentioned, the syntax would be (like):

startx -- :1

No doubt running multiple instances of the same window manager (at least a complicated desktop like GNOME or KDE) in one user account runs into contention problems. If you think about it, when do you really need to do this? The only times I've personally wanted to use multiple X-Windows instances is when testing out a new XF86Config file.

Running multiple X-Windows instances by specifying a distinct display is more clumsy than Windows XP "fast-user switching". But remember why fast-user switching came about; because while Windows (at home) is traditionally a multiprogramming (aka multitasking) OS, it wasn't a multi-user OS. Although NT does run processes under different users simultaneously, there is little user-control of that facility. Run-As (the analog to su) was introduced in W2K I believe, but it's seldom used and doesn't work that well. IIRC the process is run as a particular user, but the original login environment cannot be changed. This is an important distinction at times, especially since because of the per-user Registry being as important as it is.

So fast-user switching puts WXP on par with UNIX as a multi-user OS, with a more convenient GUI. In my opinion, it's a useful if seldom used feature. Think of families that share a PC with users that don't want to log out and in all the time and lose state. Now that the standard consumer-level Window OS is finally stable, it's a feature with actual appeal (just imagine Windows 9x trying to juggle multiple users throughout a full day's use!).

RAM is the least of worries. These days, physical RAM is cheap and plentiful. And applications typically will be shared; multiple instances of a program would share the same code pages. And it wouldn't really matter if a "background" user's process was swapped out if memory is tight, unless there are too many ACTIVE memory-hungry processes running simultaneously. And that problem would similarly affect just one heavily-multitasking user or a few on the same host.