It's a personal computer. No, it's a family computer. No, it's two . . . two . . . two computers in one! Picture this. You're working at home on an important business document when your daughter tells you she needs to use the computer for a while to do research for a school project. Do you have to close all your applications and log out for her to do her work? Nope. The following hack shows you a few ways to let your daughter log in and work with her own desktop without you having to close your applications and log out first.
You can get two or more users logged in and running separate graphical desktops on the same machine in a number of ways. This hack explores the built-in method.
You might recall that people used to attach several text-based terminals to minicomputers and mainframes so that many users could access the computer at once. Each person could log in to the computer and work on his separate text console, because he had his own text-based terminal connected to the main computer. Linux simulates that kind of behavior with a single terminal and several virtual consoles. Most Linux distributions provide six text-based virtual consoles and usually three virtual consoles for graphical desktops, although more of both types are possible.
If you have used the graphical interface only on Linux and you're not familiar with virtual consoles, here's a quick way to see what they're all about. Press the key combination Ctrl-Alt-F1. You should see a text-based screen with a login prompt. This is virtual console 1. Press the key combination Ctrl-Alt-F2. This is virtual console 2. You can get back to the graphical desktop by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F7, because the default virtual console for graphical desktops is virtual console 7. If you can start up a second graphical desktop, it will be assigned to the next available virtual console after the previous graphical desktop, which is virtual console 8. You can switch to that desktop by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F8. So, when you achieve your goal of starting up two separate graphical desktops, you can switch between them by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F7 and Ctrl-Alt-F8.
Some Linux distributions
with the latest versions of
GNOME or KDE include a menu option to log in as another user on a
separate virtual terminal. For example, as of this writing, one menu
sequence (on Gentoo Linux) for GNOME is Applications
|
The latest versions of KDE have a similar option. The menu sequence
on my Gentoo system is K Menu
Because your version of GNOME and/or KDE probably lacks these menu options, here are two additional, easy ways to get two or more graphical login screens running at once. The first way sets up multiple login screens for KDM. The second sets up multiple login screens for GDM.