Turn One Computer into Two
Share your PC: Free 2-User PC Multiplier™

Userful® (Free 2-User Edition) is a simple and free way to transform your dual-monitor PC (Linux or Windows or Mac on Intel) into a dual-station PC! You'll be able to support two independent users, each with their own screen and keyboard with just one PC. All you need is a computer with two monitors connected (e.g., using a dual-head video card) and an extra USB keyboard and mouse.

Developer Community: Want to get involved?

openUserful.org is a developer community based around Open Source multi-station Linux. You can also visit the our wiki page on SourceForge and/or subscribe to the developer mailing list. Userful will be releasing large portions of its code over time through this open-source developer community site.

Will Userful software become open sourced?

Our intention is to eventually release all the elements required to create an end-to end Linux-based multi-station / multi-seat solution under the GPL. This will be a progressive process and may take some time. The more vibrant and active the community, the more resources Userful can allocate to preparing source code and documentation for release.

How is Userful's product different from or better than other multi-seat approaches?

Userful's approach virtualizes a single instance of X to support multiple users. Other multi-seat approaches start separate instances of X (one for each user). The separate instance approach has the following limitations:

They don't support using both heads on consumer dual head cards. The hardware cost savings alone of using dual-head single chip cards instead of single chip single head cards or very expensive dual chip dual head cards can easily exceed a hundred dollars per head, in addition to enabling you to fit more users on the limited number of PCI slots in your motherboard.
They are very finicky about the graphics cards and chipsets supported.
They are less resource efficient (each instance of X imposes a RAM and CPU overhead).

Userful's approach also offers easy configuration, and a host of other benefits.

Userful has been deploying multi-station Linux since early 2002 and has developed some GPL'd kernel patches to help make multi-station work. Eventually we switched approaches because of the difficulties listed above.

Userful's Desktop Multiplier package also includes some graphical install and configuration tools, cross distro testing and quality assurance, and builds RPM/DEB packages to make installation and removal on supported distros comparatively effortless.

How can I get Desktop Multiplier in my own language?

Sure. Simply translate and send us the PO file.

My distro isn't officially supported. Will Desktop Multiplier install on it?