Macosx Fast User Switching & How it's done on linux.

[comtux]

This is an easy tip.

See here first: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/fastuserswitching/

Description:

3D-Desktop is an OpenGL program for switching virtual desktops in a seamless 3-dimensional manner on Linux. The current desktop is mapped into a fullscreen 3D environment where you may choose other screens. Several different visualization modes are available.

Download 3D-Desktop
http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/

And after you ./configure & make && make install
Open a konsole

3ddesk --acquire
&
And asign a hotkey with this command:
/usr/bin/3ddesk --nozoom --mode=cylinder

Done now you can do Fast User Switching the way mac does it.

All this is going to do is change windows though right? Its not actually going to let you login as a new user....

[comtux]

Ahhh yup you are right dam you mcangeli
I e-mail the creator of 3D-Desktop about how you would go about switching users when you switch screens .
Maybe if he responds he will do it for me and i will not have to figure it out my self Hmm.....Maccorin you know c and opengl don't you?
Can you help with this a patch maybe?

[Gruntled]

It looks like that's the case.

I'd like to have a slick way of locking my session, while allowing for another user to log in

[comtux]

I am looking a the source here and i might be able to compleate this my self but do not quoat me on that i am not a c or c++ programmer.
unless there is a ruby port of this.
So if anyone has free time hay this is a cool project.
Ahh mcangeli it is starting to look like linuxfoo is my project site. Wuups

[maccorin]

to get the functionality you seem to want (different users on different virtual desktops), it would take a lot more then patching 3d-desktop. You'd have to change the very core of how X11 and Desktop WM's work.

Right now when you run X11 it is "owned" by the person that started it, now if it's gdm or something, it can change it's uid, by calling setuid() so that you own it, but a non-root user cannot setuid() to some random other person.

[maccorin]

for clarities sake, lets go through what it would take:

you could use pam to authenticate different users... this would have to be done on the WM level though, not 3d-desktop.

Then the WM would have to store multiple sessions in memory, it could cache it to disk though if needed.....

so what am i saying?

What you want is possible, but it's not possible by patching 3d-desktop, you need to patch your WM