I’m not much hoepful, but… just in case :)

I would like to be able to start a second session in a window of my current one (I mean a second session where I log in as a different user, similar to what happens with the various ctrl+alt+Fx, but starting a graphical session rather than a console one).

Do you know of some software that lets me do it?

Can I somehow run a KVM using my host disk as a the disk for the guest VM (and without breaking stuff)?

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    51·
    2 months ago

    It’s helpful to in this case to say what you’re actually trying to do.

    I don’t think you want multiseat, but I did something similar with x back in the day using a configuration for users similar to what’s described here.

    Note that that isn’t what you asked for. It’s having multiple x sessions on different f1, f2 etc keys.

    • talkingpumpkin@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’m just messing around with testing/configuring different desktop environment/window managers and I’m looking for a quick way to preview them (running the new session as my user would be fine too - I just thought it would be simpler as a different user)

      • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 months ago

        running a “second seat” on a different F key like in the link might be a good way to do that.

        back in the day i would just log out and log in. there’s so much going on with desktop environments i kinda had to spend some time in one doing my daily to figure out if it was what i wanted.

  • enkers@sh.itjust.works
    41·
    2 months ago

    I’d imagine you could run a VNC server, and then just login from the same PC. This kinda what you’re looking for?

    There are some limitations, like I don’t think hardware acceleration would work, for example.

    Edit: I did a little searching for “nested x-session” and found out that there is a specific x11 program to do exactly what you want called xephyr. There’s also a brief guide on the arch wiki.

  • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    XWayland has something called a “rootful mode” where it opens an X11 session as a window nested inside a Wayland session. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij3rsqX2pKQ XWayland will be started as your own user, but maybe you could use sudo -u ... to set a different user.

    The other possibility is to switch to another terminal session with a different user, start an X11 session with startx, and use x11vnc -listen 127.0.0.1 -forever -passwd PASS1234 to run a VNC server that’s only accessible from the local machine.

  • bruhSoulz@lemmy.mlEnglish
    22·
    2 months ago

    i do not think it is possible, but perhaps the closest thing u can get is virtualbox or qemu/kvm/virtmanager with shared folders, i believe that allows you to passthrough files between guest and host. (shared folders allow you to copy paste something on ur host into them and have them appear in the guest, but dont think i used them before, at least not extensively, so you might have to look into them to check if this advice helps you)