[Libdlo] What components do I need for multi-seat?

[Bernie Thompson]

Hi Alexander,

It sounds like you're already past these questions, but wanted to post
answers for the record.

As a general statement, things are still rough and vary from distro to
distro.  A big part of the work ahead is driving everything towards
unified ways of doing things.

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 2:48 AM, Alexander Todorov <atodorov at otb.bg> wrote:
> Hi all,
> at displaylink.org I see several software components for USB docks. Which of
> them I need to build a multi-seat workstation with Linux?

http://libdlo.freedesktop.org/wiki/MultiSeatTerminal represents how
myself and some others been doing it.

> displaylink-mod  is a kernel module as I understand. This should be necessary.

Yep.

> xf86-driver-displaylink is a Xorg driver, correct ? What's the difference with
> the kernel driver then?

That X server uses the kernel driver to do all the talking to the
device. It is very similar to the generic framebuffer X server
(fbdev), but with a few additional ioctls for performance.  So, in
short, all the heavy device-related lifting is centralized in the
kernel fbdev layer. All the X and configuration stuff is at user mode.

> libdlo is a user space library. What can I use it for, do I need it?

You don't and won't need it for the multiseat case done this way.  It
doesn't need to be on the system.

>
> Thanks,
> Alexander.

Now, I'm not touching on details here (like that udlfb and
displaylink-mod, both written by Roberto, share common ioctls so that
xf-driver-displaylink works on them both; or that jaya's displaylinkfb
driver is designed to work with the standard fbdev driver rather than
the displaylink specific x server). So just focusing on what works
best from now and is best documented on the wiki.

Best wishes!
Bernie
http://plugable.com/