[vox-tech] Demonstrations of Linux flexibility?

[Karsten M. Self]

on Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 04:26:20PM -0800, Rod Roark (rod at sunsetsystems.com) wrote:
> On Friday 04 March 2005 03:07 pm, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > I'm looking for examples illustrating the flexibility possible with
> > GNU/Linux.
> 
> Here's a very simple one that I encountered a couple of days
> ago.
> 
> With Linux and X you can have multiple user logins running programs on
> a single graphical desktop.  

Via Xnest or VNC, say?  Or even within a single X session.  Hell, all of
the above, right ;-)

> This is handy if you want to run multiple instances of a web
> application that uses cookies to keep track of sessions... since for a
> given web server and client user, there is only one cookie repository.
> While Mozilla supports multiple user profiles, it doesn't let you run
> them concurrently from one login.

Quite.  Good point.
 
> This particular case was a doctor who wanted to work with several
> patients at once, running a web application that's not designed for
> it.
> 
> As far as I know, you can't do that with Windows.

There *is* a "run-as" feature in recent NT-based legacy MS Windows
releases, but I'm not entirely sure of its functionality.

I *do* know that legacy MS Windows' SMB/CIFS networking authentication
is inextricably bound to "single user-per-desktop", and doesn't allow a
given box to be authenticated as multiple users for network shares.  Or
at least that's my understanding.  Too, in Domain mode, "Fast User
Switching" isn't supported -- only Workgroup mode.  Nick Petreley's
written on that one a few times.


Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    This suggests a more troubled future for Gnome than I had imagined.
    - Chip Salzenberg, on GNOME developer attitudes
      http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2004-January/008588.html
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