What breakage does this actually fix?

Posted Jun 8, 2016 21:36 UTC (Wed) by xtifr (guest, #143)
In reply to: What breakage does this actually fix? by NAR
Parent article: Distributors ponder a systemd change

> In a single user desktop/laptop setting I presume you shutdown the system after logout (why else would you logout?)

Like a lot of programmers (and other technical people), you're ignoring the very common case of the *family* computer! Dad may log out so the kid can work on a school paper. Doesn't mean that dad wants his emacs "daemon" to die. In fact, he may be relying on it not dying!

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What breakage does this actually fix?

Posted Jun 8, 2016 23:50 UTC (Wed) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (3 responses)

I guess that family dad has never heard of "Fast User Switching" [1] which exist to handle exactly that usecase.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_user_switching

What breakage does this actually fix?

Posted Jun 9, 2016 4:26 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (2 responses)

Or maybe dad doesn't *want* to leave *all* his processes running and consuming resources. Maybe his machine simply isn't powerful enough to have five (two parents, three kids) complete desktop sessions all running, but is powerful enough to keep a couple of relatively lightweight emacs daemons or screen sessions running. Maybe he tried fast user switching and saw it bring his machine to its knees.

Not everyone has a screaming, top-of-the-line, latest model machine with all the trimmings. Especially those who are trying to feed three or more children! :)

What breakage does this actually fix?

Posted Jun 9, 2016 10:37 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

Granted, I have used fast user switching only on Windows, but it didn't seem to slow down the system. There might be some swapping at the user switch, but otherwise the left processes shouldn't use much CPU (unless dad was encoding DVD - in that case the process killing would be a even worse solution).

What breakage does this actually fix?

Posted Jun 9, 2016 21:45 UTC (Thu) by mstone_ (subscriber, #66309) [Link]

"some swapping"

^^^ lol, yeah, the machine's unusable for several minutes every time someone "fast" user switches.