[digi_owl]

Unix have all kinds of funny things if all happens within a single box.

If you want to send someone a message, there is write (if the person have mesg set to yes). There is also talk, but it requires its own daemon.

Seriously, _nix started out in the mainframe era. Meaning that the basic assumption was multiple terminals hooked up to a single computer, with a different user on each terminal.

Sadly we have a generation or more that grew up with single user computers, and seems to insist on turning _nix into that rather than embrace what it can offer.

[canhascodez]

Multiseat is a bit complex under X11, but certainly possible today. What do you see as the advantages of thin clients, though?

[kbenson]

I think the point wasn't to specifically lament the lack of thin clients, but the lack of knowledge about how the systems are really designed be multi-user, and actually multi-concurrent-user, as opposed to systems like windows which eventually gained multi-user capabilities, and even then concurrent use isn't exactly the common case (and I'm not sure how well it works in practice, but I imagine with RDP it works well enough on the server products).

[canhascodez]

All of these tools and capabilities still exist; there's probably still some Unix beards hanging out on Nyx and SDF. Yet here we all are having a discussion on HN instead.

[kbenson]

> All of these tools and capabilities still exist

Yes... that's the point of the discussion. They exist, but there is (or is perceived to be) lack of knowledge about their existence and how to make use of them from some newer users, either because of the push for desktop linux, or for whatever reason.

> Yet here we all are having a discussion on HN instead.

I have no idea what you're trying to imply here. I suspect maybe we are discussing similar, but ultimately different, things.

[canhascodez]

I'm implying that multi-user systems were supplanted by web applications, because multi-user systems did not offer good value, and do not scale. Neither do I see these systems being advanced in this thread based on their utility.

[digi_owl]

Multiseat is a dirty hack. It is about using software to build a terminal out of a random collection of screens and input devices. All it has really done is give us yet another "session" to mentally track, in the form of consolekit/logind, on top of the kernel and X provides ones.

And it is not about thin clients, thin clients btw is yet another Windows-ism, it is about the concepts embedded in the unix concept that current day devs seems to either sidestep or downplay while building house of cards in userspace that poorly replicate said concepts.

[canhascodez]

You're not really explaining what it is that you think is missing from modern computing. From my perspective, none of this technology has gone away, but some things see very little use for good reasons.

[digi_owl]

IT IS NOT THAT IT HAS GONE AWAY, IT IS THAT THE CURRENT GENERATION IS IMPLEMENTING CRAP CLONES OUT OF IGNORANCE AND HUBRIS!!!

[canhascodez]

You are not entitled to speak to anyone like that, and neither wisdom nor correctness increase with volume. This is a comment which can only be dismissed. I am sure that you have much better arguments at your disposal, if you would condescend to employ them.