Sounds like a somewhat simpler version of the multi-user Unix systems I was building at my job 20 years ago. They had one PC (usually a then-current 386/20) with special multi-user serial cards that supported 4 or 8 terminals, and ran SCO Unix.
}:-)4
So this is basically thin-client/server?
I remember those days. We would install a 16 or 32 port serial multiplexor and hang dumb terminals off of them. SCO called it “Instant Mainframe”
Those where the days!
This is making me think ‘virtual desktop’, such as VMware’s VDI, only being run on the local workstation at the user level. Am I terribly off-base here?
Thin clients>>Virtual desktops is pretty sweet. I started using it at work in a few departments, and it’s awesome. You can have all of the desktops in the datacenter, a cheap thin client that’ll practically last forever not needing replacement, and if a user’s hardware requirements increase, with a few mouse clicks you can give them more resources. You can also use the ‘checkout’ feature to allow certain users to even take their ‘workstation’ home, or travel with them on mobile devices(laptops, Tablets, ect). Malware infection(for windows users)? Revert that sucker to a snapshot and forget about it.
It almost makes the PC itself obsolete for most uses. To setup another computer, it’s literally as easy as a ‘copy/paste’ in Windows. Literally nothing to it. For people starting out these days, I would strongly encourage techs to learn server hardware, networked storage, and Virtualization(vmware specifically). That’s the direction where everything has gone, or is going.
I want to say that Solaris (or SunOS not sure) had this back in circa 1995. Still seems like a good idea though.