Switching between virtual desktops

[Matthijs Kooijman]

Hi Luca,

> A: Im no expert either (far from that, actually), but I think the
> good/expensive hardware wont be necessary.. I mean, if I choose to have like
> 10 virtual desktops and hold down Ctrl+Alt+Right Arrow Key, the VD's change
> so fast until the last one that I can barely notice anything... And thats on
> a low configuration machine.
But that is on a single monitor. If I understand your intent correctly, you
want to multiplex the signal over 10 different monitors, which is the real
challenge here. I'm not so sure what a monitor does when you suddenly
disconnect it for a (short) while, since it will probably lose the syncing
signals.

If you build your hardware clever enough so it will always connect
the syncing signals to all monitors, and connect the signal pins to ground (or
something) when the monitor is not "selected", this might work, provided that
your monitor is "slow" enough (if it switches to black fast enough, you'll be
looking at a monitor that is black 9/10th of the time).

Apart from that problem, I think timing will be critical here. Even if you can
switch fast enough, you should make sure that you're switching the virtual
desktop (ie, the image on the VGA output) at exactly the same moment as you're
switching the output in your switchbox. Any offset here means that the image
of one screen is visible on another screen, which might not bee all too
noticable, but will probably lead to a lot of people with a headache in the
long run.

Not trying to demotivate you, but I have serious doubts about the feasibility
of your approach (that, or I'm completely misunderstanding what you're trying
to do...).

Going down the typical multihead road with at least one VGA output per display
is probably going to be a lot easier (but still challenging to get working
properly probably, if you're going to share an X server between multiple
users). I'd expect that PCI videocards should be available in plenty in the
second hand market, lots of people still have them piling up at home I think.

Gr.

Matthijs
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