funny user moment (and perhaps a bug)

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 08:07 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 01:47 -0600, Callum Lerwick wrote:
> > On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 09:24 +1100, Darren Steven wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Just one question about this thread. Are local and remote the same user?
> > > If so, won't there be some reuse of the daemons etc that handle dbus
> > > interaction etc.
> > > 
> > > I know with kde that it is a bit scary running 2x sessions as the same
> > > user. Things don't always behave. Not sure about gnome
> > 
> > GNOME brings up a dialog warning you that you're already logged in if
> > you try and log in twice. Its not very strongly worded, but the
> > implication is "please don't do that".
> > 
> > One of the more annoying things is you can't run more than one copy of
> > Galeon. Trying to launch a second copy only results in the original copy
> > opening a new window in the original session. And the gnome panel tends
> > to get a bit flaky. Etc...
> > 
> > IMHO this is really broken. You should be able to log in to GNOME more
> > than once. After all, you can log in as many times as you want to a
> > shell. Seems like a horrible regression of functionality as far as unix
> > philosophy is concerned.
> 
> Hmm, what the heck for?

Because Unix and Linux are OSes having been designed to work in a
network.

>   That's what Desktop->Preferences->Remote
> Desktop is for, really.  What's the case for logging in twice?
Because you work in a network ...

Standard situations:
* You login into your personal "desktop" in your office, and leave for
another room, on the same network and want to login there ... 
* Several monitors on your desktop physically connected to different
machines, but with a common and shared (networked) /home underneath.

>   Shell
> and desktop are so totally different that I'm not convinced that they
> should operate the same way here (not that my opinion matters, really).
The problems underneath are the same. Saving a bash history isn't
actually different from saving "Desktop"-setup.

> Should we expect all applications that provide GUI to put in a ton of
> work to account for a case that a fairly small number of people might
> actually use?
Yes. That's what GUI-toolkits are for. It's not individual applications
which should have to care about, it's the GUI-toolkit which should take
care about transparently to the user and to the developer.

Ralf