Setting up dual monitor/keyboard

[CrimsonTwilight]

Hey everyone. I was thinking of setting up two monitors, with a seperate keyboard for each running off the same computer. I want to be able to have seperate programs running on each and control them each seperatly from their respective keyboards. first of all I was wondering if this was possible. And second of all if anyone could give me some pointers on where to start.

[Killer_Typo]

i know the dual monitors is possible. But you can only use it to do a super wide monitor, or use it as copy (IE it shows the same on both monitors), i dont think you can use seperate keyboards for each monitor.

[CrimsonTwilight]

Oh ok, thanks for the info

[kc0arf]

Hi,

I don't think so either. I have done the dual monitor thing, and really enjoy it, but having separate keyboards and such won't work. The serial / USB busses would have no idea which monitor belonged to what process.

Nope.

Christian

[alc6379]

This isn't entirely correct. If you were interested in using Linux/BSD to do this, you most certainly could do this. For Windows, there's not a way that I'm aware of.

If you'd like to do this in Linux, check out this link:
http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/multiuser/

It also has references to other pages which discuss similar concepts. Basically, you could do a couple of things with it: You could run one instance of X, and have multiple ServerLayout options with it, or you could run multiple instances of X, one for each monitor.

If any of that went WHOOSH! over your head, feel free to check out the link that I provided. If you search on Google for Linux for "dual keyboard" or "multihead", or multihead+multiuser, you may come up with more results.

[CrimsonTwilight]

THANKS ALC !! you've been a great help... yeah it kinda went woosh but im gonna be checking out the link. I'll report back to tell everyone how it went

[alc6379]

THANKS ALC !! you've been a great help... yeah it kinda went woosh but im gonna be checking out the link. I'll report back to tell everyone how it went

Great! Please let us know!

I've got a USB keyboard, and my computer is right next to my wife's desk. If I could get this up and running, both my wife and I could use the same box!

[jordan0420]

It is very possible on windows, My school has 5 monitors connected to a single cpu and they each act independant of eachother. ill pass by today to find out what the school uses

[crovax85]

You can do the dual monitors thing. I have done that. But i dont think you can have 2 keyboards managing different programs. Its not got much point to it.

[jordan0420]

http://www.ncomputing.com/product-vspace i think this might suit your needs. our school uses a single tower and runs 5 monitors from it each monitor and keyboard is independant of the other. what you are looking for is a thin client.
you will find a whole load of different options if you google thin client

[tje210]

this person only has 1 computer... sounds like it's for home use. vspace looks like an enterprise solution. ALC6379 was already on the right track with this one.

[tje210]

you know, this just occurred to me (and it's totally tangential probably) but i bet you could find a virtualization software that would only recognize 1 keyboard/mouse that was plugged into the computer, and you could get it to render fullscreen on only one screen. i was looking at my dock icons, and i realized taht i could probably get VMWare fusion to do what you're talking about. i'm assuming you're on windows, so you might try looking for some virtualization software for that.

if virtualization turns out to be viable for you, ask yourself -> why do you want to do this? is it just for email and web browsing, or are there windows-specific tasks that you need to accomplish? if it's the first, ALC's solution is probably the best. if it's the second, virtualization might be your best bet.