I want to use a HTPC as a desktop also.

Heres what I'm thinking...

I have one PC with one video card which has a dual output, (DVI for monitor and TV out). I want to setup an X session with the TV out running MythTV and only taking input from a remote. I also want to connect a monitor to the DVI and have an a mouse and keyboard to login and use it as a desktop.

So I was wondering if this is possible and if someone can point me in the correct direction. I'll make it easy to reply (multiple choice).

A.) It's IMPOSSIBLE (I don't understand what linux is all about and I should go back to Windows and kill myself)

B.) It's probable (I don't have a clue as how to program half the code need for this so I should forget about it and use two different computers)

C.) It's could be done ( I'm going to have to spend some time configuring a lot of things, but it should work.)

D.) It's already being done ( I'm an idiot and it's exactly what KnoppMyth is designed to do, and I should therefore go back to Windows and kill myself)

If anything I hope you enjoyed the multiple choice, Thanks.

With nVidia cards it's called "twinview" search using that as the keyword and you should find lots of info.

On the other hand what you trying to do is 1) definitely _not_ what the KnoppMyth distro was designed for (it's very focused on setting up a media server) 2) simply not going to give you very satisfactory results (both in terms of the dual headed output and manually adding a bunch of packages to setup a desktop).

This isn't a matter of Linux vs. Windows but simply of trying to turn a bundle of software focused on being a better and more powerful PVR than Tivo or the like, but still very much a purpose built appliance, into something it was never intended to be. Turning a Windows MCE box into an Office workstation will produce similarly unsatisfactory results.

The twinview isn't really what I'm looking for. I've tried it. It just give just an extended desktop or a clone depending. I want two completely different desktops with different keyboards/ mice (one just has to be a remote).

I started with trying to start 2 xsessions with different server layouts. My xorg.conf servers looked like this:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "TVLayout"
Screen "TV Monitor"
InputDevice "Remote"
EndSection
The other details aren't that important.

Now the computer boots to the "Default Layout" and I use xstart -- :1 -layout TVLayout to start the second.

Now this gives me two different desktops but both can't be running at the same time. I switch between them with ALT+CTL+F7 and ALT+CTL+F8. If one is on then the other switches off.

I've been searching for a while now and I've found this program called Xephyr that might be able to help.

http://www.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiterminal/howtos/howto-xephyr-en.htm

If anyone has used this before let me know. It's my next step try to accomplish this task. I could use some tips. So keep the posts coming I love the comments

And the Windows comment in the multiple choice was just a joke, I wouldn't even imagine trying half of this with Windows OR imagine going back to it.

I'm almost 100% sure it can be done. A while ago I saw this article on how to get 1 linux desktop to have 6 separate screens, keyboards and mice.

http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html

The sections on setting up xorg.conf might help you.

Great site thanks I'll give it a try.

I think my only problem is that X might need a dedicated video card for each monitor. I'm trying to get it going with one card, but really not to big a problem if I have to upgrade.

Thanks again love the comments keep them coming.

After trying reconfiguring the gdm.conf, I got the same results as reconfiguring xorg.conf. Gdm start the first server on the monitor with a gdm login. Once that was loaded it then started a second server on the TV with gdm. The bad new is that only the TV server was running, It switched off the monitor. Which does mean it can work, but with on rule:

One desktop per video card.

Which is kind of what I figured. Just thought I'd try with one card.

It seems xorg doesn't support this yet. Which brings up a new feature for Xorg to consider: dual desktops, not just dual heads.

A $40 PCI video card purchase is in order to test this idea further. I'm off shopping.

Any other ideas or maybe something I didn't consider let me know. Thanks.

Before I went out and bought something I might not need, I decided to keep trying. I found this great website:

http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2006/09/multiseat-computer-with-ubuntu.html

The concept is simple. Just have one huge desktop with embedded X sessions on them for each monitor.

I've done everything on there short of downloading ubuntu and trying that distro. And I can't get it to work. I don't get any Xorg errors. The large desktop is started perfectly.

It's this Xephyr program that is giving me a headache. It doesn't have a man page and the usage is kind of vague. And it appears to have been updated from when the howto was written, because they are passing arguments differently now.

It's supposed to start an embedded X session with gdm running but I keep getting an error message that says it's trying to start it's own display.

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0

How do you start an XServer that isn't active for a display?

I'm having gdm start X for both displays, then having gdm start (just one for now) a Xephyr for the monitor. That's were it complains about the fatal server error.

So any ideas how to start X with out activating the displays so Xephyr can activate them?

This howto looks reasonably good and is based on debian:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Multiterminal_with_Xephyr

Hi All,

This post is simply to do some term dropping i discovered while trying to do the same thing on my laptop. It has an Nvidia 6200.

The feature that Nazt is looking for is called a "multi-seat" configuration. This is where there are several terminals (keyboard, mouse, and monitor) connected to a single PC.

A dual headed card (like the 6200 i have) is not cabable of doing this, it may be due to the driver, but at the moment it dosen't work. What is needed is a video card for each seat in the configuration. There are some cards out there that have multiple GPU's on the one card, these may work.

Xephyr is a program that tries to work around this issue. It sits on top of a single X session and creates two or more virtual X sessions. Not as good as the other method (hardware acceleration is not so good), but a good compromise if you have no choice.

As a side note, i also believe that going back to windows should be closely followed by killing oneself.

BigB.

I've been playing with this for awhile now and still no success.

I got the Xephyr to work but ran into some keyboard mapping problems. There is a hack to fix it, but I didn't want to try it.

I did get a NV Geforce 6200 PCI card to go with my 6600GT AGP, and I'm still fighting with it. All the howto's I've read don't offer any trouble shooting. They just say it's supposed to work. It doesn't. I've tried different different drivers (i.e. nvidia new, nvidia old, nv, and vesa.) I've also tried stable and unstable versions of Xorg. No combination seems to work. Not to mention the evdev driver for keyboards seems to be a little off. Some versions don't map correctly, some can't find the device.

The hardest part of this is that the Xorg logs don't say anything when the xserver crashes or doesn't start. And I've tested the displays individually but together they just don't want to cooperate.

Anyway, it's been quite a struggle, but at least I'm learning a ton