Multi-Seat Support Running Well In Wayland/Weston

[johntrolvolta]

Nope. It's not.

Linux is all about minorities and their different needs.

Linux dominates every area of computing except the desktop. To say it's "all about minorities" is a profoundly dumb statement if ever I heard one.

[Kivada]

Lets see...8 seats, times 2 devices (keyboard+mouse) = 16 usb ports minimum. Assuming you split one 4-port hub between two seats, that's 8 hubs, and a few usb extension cables. If you wanted to drop the extensions, you'd need to chain the hubs (losing a port in each except the last hub), so you'd need an extra couple hubs, or one per seat, or use 5-port hubs instead. Assuming this all worked fine, you also need an output for each monitor attached to the workstation...I guess they make graphics cards which have many ports for these sorts of applications. Assuming 5 monitors per-card, two cards minimum. Not bad.


...my head hurts thinking about the software configuration that may be necessary for this setup. D:

Thats vastly over thinking it, get keyboards with a built in USB hub, you at most need 1 4 port USB card, some USB extension cords and duct tape.

If it moves and it's not supposed to you aren't using enough tape.

[89c51]

What's stopping you? I recall we had this same discussion something like two years ago. So you had two years to learn to code

To be clear i had 3 semesters of C (+2 semesters of assembly for a microcontroller we were using at the time) while studying. After that i was only programming in Matlab for things that don't relate much to PCs.

I can probably write a C program that will churn numbers or do something math related but GUIs or something useful i have no idea how to do it. It's not my craft in a way. I am not a computer engineer.

[erendorn]

To be clear i had 3 semesters of C (+2 semesters of assembly for a microcontroller we were using at the time) while studying. After that i was only programming in Matlab for things that don't relate much to PCs.

I can probably write a C program that will churn numbers or do something math related but GUIs or something useful i have no idea how to do it. It's not my craft in a way. I am not a computer engineer.

Get Qt creator and write a QML app (even if it only executes a script).
It is very very beginner friendly, with GUI defined in that spirit:

Rectangle {
width: 100
height:100
color: "red"
onClick: doSomething()
}

[c117152]

To be clear i had 3 semesters of C (+2 semesters of assembly for a microcontroller we were using at the time) while studying. After that i was only programming in Matlab for things that don't relate much to PCs.

I can probably write a C program that will churn numbers or do something math related but GUIs or something useful i have no idea how to do it. It's not my craft in a way. I am not a computer engineer.

It sounds like you have a decent foundation in low-level programming. So, for starters, If you still know your C then you should stick with C. Don't get dragged into learning other languages. Just pick up any one of the C gui tool kits out there. Here's a few:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits#Based_on_C_.28including_bindings_to_other_languages.29

GTK is the most popular and you can find tutorials for it all around. I personally prefer EFL's Elementary because it's a better design and doesn't carry backwards compatibility. But, it's relatively new and can get bleeding edgy at times so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it to a beginner with little to no GUI experience.

One other thing I should note is that you should avoid bindings like the plague. e.g. Qt is written in C++ but it's possible to use it in C by bindings. Avoid this at all cost. It's awkward and inflexible even to a seasoned programmer and to someone who doesn't know C++ it will be very difficult just reading the documentation let alone using the thing.

[89c51]

It sounds like you have a decent foundation in low-level programming. So, for starters, If you still know your C then you should stick with C. Don't get dragged into learning other languages. Just pick up any one of the C gui tool kits out there. Here's a few:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits#Based_on_C_.28including_bindings_to_other_languages.29

GTK is the most popular and you can find tutorials for it all around. I personally prefer EFL's Elementary because it's a better design and doesn't carry backwards compatibility. But, it's relatively new and can get bleeding edgy at times so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it to a beginner with little to no GUI experience.

One other thing I should note is that you should avoid bindings like the plague. e.g. Qt is written in C++ but it's possible to use it in C by bindings. Avoid this at all cost. It's awkward and inflexible even to a seasoned programmer and to someone who doesn't know C++ it will be very difficult just reading the documentation let alone using the thing.

I played a bit with elementary and got frustrated with all the widgets containers etc. I felt i am too novice for something like that. I'll have to toy again with the examples in the documentation but -for various reasons- i don't feel like it at the moment.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Who says you have to memorize commands? Just put the command in a script

The average user who is unaccustomed to the command line won't be writing many scripts.

That really is the point of all of this.

Even an "average user" can copypaste text from firefox to gedit, save and set the execute flag, when given instructions on how to do so.

They're capable of it, sure. But they won't. It's not like modern command lines and scripting exist in a vacuum of non-GUI reality. People are used to GUIs, and expect them.

A complex computer task without a GUI is a road less traveled. Extremely less traveled. I would argue, it's a desolate road.

The existence of a GUI does not ostracize most command line users, at least in a Linux environment. The console is still there, the config files still do what they do, scripting is still possible. But the lack of a GUI ostracizes nearly everybody else because (rightly or wrongly) command lines, config files, batch files, scripts and the rest of it are viewed as primitive and even frustrating.