multiple local X logins by same user

[Les Mikesell]

Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> 
> Erm? Every app that supports running two simultaneous independent 
> instances (which is to say, 90% or more of all non-trivial apps) won't 
> even notice they aren't in the same X session. It's only "crazy" for 
> apps that go ridiculously out of their way to make sure there is only 
> ever one instance running on a machine. In fact, *other* than Firefox I 
> can't think of a single program that has this problem.

It probably does give an efficiency boost to have the running app open a 
new window (although if that's what you wanted, you probably would have 
told it to open a new window instead of starting a new instance...).  I 
suppose it's really for the automated startup when you click a link 
embedded in some other app though.  But while it is going ridiculously 
out of it's way, you'd think it could check to see if the new invocation 
you want is running on the same $DISPLAY as the running instance or not.

> (^2 I will grant that "last state wins" may be unacceptable for things 
> like web browser history, which should be not only lossless but possibly 
> shared, but there are already good solutions for that (usually called 
> "databases"), and Firefox *is* using SQL these days...)

Any number of apps have to deal with shared files, sometimes over networks.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com