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.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    7 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·
    7 months ago

    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.

    • linuxdweeb@lemm.ee
      1·
      7 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.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      7 months ago

      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·
        7 months ago

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

  • phx@lemmy.ca
    0·
    7 months ago

    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.

    • methodicalaspect@midwest.socialEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      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.