Proposals

Plug and play multiseat

*
BoF
BoF
lpc2011-0110

Excerpt

Linux multiseat configurations hold the potential to get the cost per Linux user down to half or less of even the cheapest PCs. But can we make multiseat plug and play?

Description

Multiseat holds tons of promise, but it has been very hard for end-users to configure for each different hardware setup. To take off, it must get easier.

Inspired by the Ndiyo project involving Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser and others, good progress has been made.

This BoF session will start with a demonstration of plug and play multiseat running today on Ubuntu 9.04, showing several sets of USB displays, keyboards, and mice, each being plugged into the PC to pop up an additional terminal.

The solution uses a DisplayLink USB kernel framebuffer device and open source driver, per these instructions

The BoF session will then open discussion up to the room on remaining problems — including better integration with coming ConsoleKit & other changes, how best to tackle those problems, and how we can get this support widely integrated into Linux distros.

Back to list of proposals

Speaker

  • Bernie

    Bernie Thompson

    Biography

    Article author for the first issue of Linux Journal http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue/1

    Fallen out of touch with Linux to some degree — I’ve spent time working at both the IBM and Microsoft evil empires. Not that I consider them evil, mind you.

    Lately working on interesting USB devices, including cheap USB terminals to enable lower cost and plug-and-play setup of Linux multiseat configurations.