this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
8 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

48372 readers
1546 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I currently have a PC running Windows 11 that my S/O and I use multi-seated with Aster Multiseat. However, we're both equally sick of Windows and are interested in switching to Linux.

However, all the information that I can find on multiseat in Linux are forum posts and unfinished wiki entries for Ubuntu and Fedora, and they all seem to be from around 2008-2012.

We're about to upgrade our PC to support two RTX 3060s and a Ryzen 9 (of course, including the usual two monitors and sets of peripherals).

Can Linux (preferably Fedora, as it's my favorite distro so far) easily support multiseating?

Will there be any performance issues using this method?

Is it possible to isolate applications per user? (Aster Multiseat doesn't do this, so sometimes an application can detect another instance on the other user and refuses to start...)

Thanks in advance.

top 15 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Can you explain what mean by multi seat? As far is distros go I would stick to mint as it is much more stable and user friendly. (Source: I'm a Fedora user)

Edit: are you talking about having to separate monitors and keyboards? If so it may not be the best answer. More information. What I would do is install Proxmox and then setup vfio (PCIe pass though) to pass though the GPUs. You will most likely need two USB cards so that each station can have its own USB.

Assuming you get the hypervisor and hardware setup you will likely need to configure some way to keeping everything updated. You can use ansible and a file share or you can just setup automatic updates manually.

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI(e)_Passthrough

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

By multiseat, do you mean allowing two people to use your Linux PC at the same time, using a separate monitor and keyboard/mouse, as of they're on a separate computer? You can do this without installing additional software, though you must configure the seat from command line:

Is it possible to isolate applications per user?

Each user with have their own login session, so ther application processes should be separate from each other.

[–] INeedMana@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Regarding Wayland, looking at this it seems that it might be pretty straightforward but then for example sway seems to be defining seats a little bit different. So it might require some tinkering in the end, depending which compositor you decide to use.
Loginctl seems to be X/Wayland independent and useful in both.

From what I've found it seems that there are more questions on the internet regarding something not working well in multi-seat or needing a patch for that, than how to set the multi-seat up. Situations like this usually mean that setting this thing up is quite straightforward. It might also be a niche, though

[–] fhek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago

Huh. TIL what multiseat is. Never knew that existed.

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

While Linux TTY is multiseat by default, each TTY is a seperate user login, I'm not sure any of the GUI's support this function.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You can run multiple X servers for a graphical multiseat setup. It's a lot of work to set it up and most of the information about it is out of date though.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And distros have basically moved to Wayland as well, which probably is worse when it comes to stuff like that.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml -1 points 11 months ago

I boldly assume that Wayland is simply incapable of providing multi-seat functionality.

[–] Kushia@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago (4 children)

What advantage do you get using one PC in this way instead of two?

[–] linuxdweeb@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

It's kind of romantic. Thinking of all the hoops they had to jump through to get this intimate setup just right brings a tear to my eye.

[–] Dr_Willis@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

I have seen this used in school situations with 3+ seats per PC.

that can add up when dealing with a dozen+ PCs.

For home use, not much a benefit, but I did have it setup years ago for the grandkids.

[–] Eric_Pollock@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Not only for saving money, as when we upgrade the PC, I'm going to be able to sell off most of the components that get replaced, but space savings is also a big part of it. We're going to be buying an RV to live full time in soon, and the less space it takes up, the better.

Plus, we have used it in this configuration for almost two years now, and it has worked without issue (EasyAntiCheat doesn't play nice, but we don't play many games that use it anyway). And honestly at this point, I kind of enjoy the challenge lol

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I mean, you save money by not having to buy another PC...

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So essentially it's running a single computer we if it were two seperate workstations?

I could see an implementation that's similar to those running a VM with a DGPU for gaming. User A could run a login against the primary GPU and OS. User B could run a VM with several cores allocated and the secondary GPU dedicated to the VM. If any shared did file resources in the primary OS are needed, KVM has ways to do that as well.

Not entirely sure why this reply is being panned (was at -6 when I first saw it).

OP is in the process of upgrading their PC to a Ryzen 9. If we make the assumption that this Ryzen 9 is on the AM5 platform, the CPU comes equipped with an IGPU, meaning the RTX 3060s are no longer needed by the bare metal. So, installing a stable, minimal point release OS as a base would minimize resource utilization on the hardware side. This could be something like Debian Bookworm or Proxmox VE with the no-subscription repo enabled. There's no need for the NVIDIA GPUs to be supported by the bare metal OS.

Once the base OS is installed, the VMs can be created, and the GPUs and peripherals can be passed through. This step effectively removes the devices from the host OS -- they don't show up in lsusb or lspci anymore -- and "gives" them to the VMs when they start. You get pretty close to native performance with setups of this nature, to the point that users have set up Windows 10/11 VMs in this way to play Cyberpunk 2077 on RTX 4090s with all the eye candy, including ray reconstruction.

Downsides:

  • Three operating systems to maintain: bare metal, yours, and your partner's.
  • Two sets of applications/games to maintain: yours and your partner's.
  • May need to edit VM configs somewhat regularly to stay ahead of anti-cheat measures targeted at users of VMs.
  • Performance is not identical to bare metal, but is pretty close.
  • VM storage is isolated, so file sharing requires additional setup.

Upsides:

  • If you don't know a lot about Linux, you'll know a bunch more when you're done with this.
  • Once you get the setup ironed out, it won't need to change much going forward.
  • Each VM's memory space is isolated, so applications won't "step on each other" -- that is, you can both run the same application or game simultaneously.
  • Each user can run their own distro, or even their own OS if they wish. You can run Fedora and your partner can run Mint, or even Windows if they really, really want to. This includes Windows 11 as you can pass an emulated TPM through to meet the hardware requirements.
  • Host OS can be managed via web interface (cockpit + cockpit-machines) or GUI application (virt-manager).

It's not exactly what OP is looking for, but it's definitely a valid approach to solving the problem.