Multi-user systems may be relatively rare, but as someone who was responsible for multiple LTSP deployments, I shudder at the thought that security in such cases would be cast aside or relegated to an afterthought. LTSP is a great way to use old hardware. For that matter, any home machine used by the whole family would also be multi-user (assuming people set up their own logins).
On a more general note, Linux has inherited rich multi-user capabilities from Unix, and I hate to see that atrophy over time. As one example, it is very easy to find information on how to configure popular programs such as Firefox, KDE, OpenOffice, etc. for a single user, but often maddeningly hard to determine how to configure on a system-wide basis. The fact that FF can't run multiple instances from a single profile is not technically a multi-user issue, but also drives me up the wall...
Posted Apr 15, 2009 1:25 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
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Well I can agree with that.
I don't know exactly why, but I have a feeling that multiuser systems will become increasingly important in the future.
Something will come along... like the acceptance of IPv6 and the decline of the "Personal Computer"-ing inflicted client-server relationship and the internet will return to it's P2P roots. (for reasons of scalability, robustness, expense). If something like that were to happen and people realized that having mobile computers could become essentially disposible if they turned into little more then terminals for the 'big' computer at home or clusters at work... Then multiuser systems could become common place again.