* Gerhard den Hollander [Mon, 15 Oct 2001 20:07:08 +0200]:

* Vitaly Shishakov (Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 09:05:41PM +0400)

And while Xfree 4 can drive more than one monitor, I don;t think the 3 or more monitor setup is very stable.

Rest assured, it is ;-) Last year at Linuxtag (Germanys largest Linux event) XFree86 demoed X running with 12 monitors/cards. The monitors were stacked 4x3 making a nice display running across all twelve, though I wouldn't recommend anything that needs quick changing displays on that as it took noticable time to draw all screens :-) Philipp -- "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place." - Douglas Adams in Guardian, 25-Aug-95

I believe what you are looking for is what I call a dumb terminal. A "computer" with almost no hardware of it's own that typically runs off the serial port of a server. This is similar to the setup of an mainframe. This setup is extreamly easy to do, there is even a project that not only offers software that is all but preconfigured but also suggestions on hardware and styles of setting it up. Check out www.ltsp.org it may have some very valuable information for you. Austin Morgan On Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 08:07:08PM +0200, Gerhard den Hollander wrote:

* Vitaly Shishakov (Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 09:05:41PM +0400)

...

Dear all.

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I have an idea of setting up a mulitheaded linux box, i.e. with N displays. keyboards and mice.

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if i get several PCI videocards (e.g. Matrox's milleniums) several USB keyboards and USB mice, and attach all that stuff, will i be able to set up X-servers so that i have several different X-Terminals running at the same time on one box?

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I am not sure that this is possible, can anyone advise me something? If i succeed, this will be the most perfect solution for student computer classes (since i am pushing linux for use in !!!

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can i set up a similar dual-terminal box using a Dualheaded Matrox G400? (with two USB keyboards and two USB mice) ?

This is not possible (unless you're willing to do some serious kernel and XFree hacking ;) ) Multihead is, multi keyboard is not.

And while Xfree 4 can drive more than one monitor, I don;t think the 3 or more monitor setup is very stable.

Geting a dual head videocard (matrox or NVidia) will make for a likely more stable system than playing around with many single head video boards.

I've done a fair bit of experimenting with dual videocard setups and foudn that X isn;t all that stable if you have 2 different videoboards. Having 2 identical boards is supposed to be more stable, but I never tried that.

I eventually gave up and wnet for the dualhead NVidia boards (for my suers) and a single 1600x1200 card for myself.

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