very few people share one machine for many users, and multi user doesnt do much to protect the machine or the data
Do you have a source for this? It is not at all uncommon. My parents do it (why would they need two computers when one is more than enough?). My school did it when I was there (we had maybe 5 computers in the classroom, and only because our teacher went through a lot of efforts organizing cookie sales to get some moneym and then finding very cheap older computers). My university of course did it a lot (one compulter per student in classrooms, but we would move from one classroom to another and not always sit at the same desk). My cousin works as a mechanic, and in the shop they have a single computer where everyone goes once a day or so to check their pro emails. They don’t really need a computer room there.
And this is just a few examples from my personal life, in a country were computers are reasonably affordable and common.
Yes, multi-user does not necessarily provide a fully isolated and secure environment for each user. But it at least allows people to have a different wallpaper, their own important shortcuts on the desktop, and their files organized the way they want. That’s the minimum we should provide. And if you don’t want to use the feature, that’s fine. Have you noticed that Android phones have multiuser support? It’s there but it’s not enabled by default, and quite unobtrusive. So if you don’t need it, you can just completely ignore it.
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I never had multi-user experience at family, school, university or work. At home I always had personal PC, at school/university each student sit at separate PC and usually use USB drive to save work. University PCs used network boot and all changes are lost after reboot.
Is it possible to implement support for multi-user mode using modules?
I mean the following: by default, the system is installed without support for multi-user mode, if multi-user mode is required, either during installation or after, we install the required packages to implement multi-user mode.
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In my case (in two universisites I went to as well as in high school), we had a network-mounted home directory. So you could customize things however you wanted, it was stored in your homedir and that would be mounted when you log in (this was available for Windows, and also for Linux at the second university where my engineering school was).
Why would you do that? Multiuser is just creating an extra home directory for another user. If you need it, you could activate it by, you know, creating another user. And if you don’t, well, you just don’t create another user, and things will be just as before.
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I am not strong in these matters.
It seems to me that a single-user operating system is less demanding on resources than a multi-user one. I could be wrong… I would not want to change anything in my computer (buy more memory), just because Haiku has the possibility of a multi-user mode.
On any remotely modern computer(except maybe embedded devices), the feature being available is negligible in terms of system resources. You’d have a harder time buying memory in such a small increment to make that difference.
We already support posix multiuser, so whatever ressources it drains it does already.
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If this is true, I’m really happy!
I cannot imagine any major resource usage being added due to improved multi-user support, beyond a bit more disk space for the added code for a secure login application and maybe home directory management.
As nephele says most of the infrastructure is in place for multiple users so it is maybe already incurring a minor cost in the kernel. Any secure login application can be opt-in and maybe even in an additional package which would then not even use disk space for those who do not want it.
To add my two cents on the various discussions I think capabilities are very cool and inline with BeOS and Haiku philosophy. I also think looking at how Android and iOS do things make some sense, except maybe making it a bit easier for applications to share files or access common files (with the right user-granted “capability”.) There is plenty to think about and experiment with, but I don’t think we can afford to spend a lot of time on it before R1, as I have said before.
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Well guys, how about coming up with a feature list of what a new modern and evolved system should look like that surpasses existing current technology?
Think about it for two minutes and make a list taking into account your technical knowledge and how you would like it to be to make your life easier, safe and practical.
So that this list can be useful for drawing up feasibility drafts…
Files stored in “Trash” was recoverable at my school…
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Oh no - thanks. For me it’s the worst.
But I would not dispute on it as it is leading back to clicking vs issueing commands by pipeline in a terminal world - so generally no consensus.
On a posix system if I’m an admin user on the system I will never get message “you are not authorized …” on files which copied/created withn the same user meanwhile on windows I met these situations in case ntfs.
Also I can sípmly overview pewrmissions by listing files/directories. There is no more simple stuff.
LOL
Thanks - you could make me laugh with this line
against it I’m spending my sorrow days I have actually.
I’m grateful - really – no sarcasm at all. 
It was extrtaordinary - or most modern way : it was AWESOME ! 
.
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I know many people who are against funding the military because they think it is pointless.
Some people think the billions of taxpayers money which was channeled directly and indirectly into u*ix derivates and into their userland development is pointless, considering the harm and mess they made in the last 50 years and counting.
Indirectly you pay for every major OS, but it make u*ixes only cheaper, not free.
Consider this.
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I can say similar about NT. It is extremely overengineered and have GUI implementation in kernel (win32k.sys) that is extremely vulnerable. I really think that Windows 9x VMM architecture is better and NT is failed project (it was intended to be portable and server OS, but this niche is mostly filled with *NIX OSes).
Many Windows malware come from bad vulnerable NT kernel design.
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This is going completely offtopic.
Also it doesn’t make sense: NATO has big contracts with Microsoft and the military of all NATO members must use Microsoft products and pays Microsoft a huge amount of money so they have long-term maintenance and no need to worry about licenses.
That is one of the problems with the military things: it is largely a disguised way to give a lot of public money to private companies. I would much prefer if this money went to research&eductation instead, and in that case it would more likely end up helping opensource/commons projects, instead of private companies
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I agree but i would prefer to have a word in the decision where those fundings go.
I keep my opinion no u*ix derivate is free.
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Market share says otherwise.
Dear @BlueHorse,
One and only sentence …
You may think I would think to the same as you did in such case
and how elegant way of your ripost -
BUT
I may THINK DIFFERENT
→ WHAT YOUR RESPONSE MEANS
→ OR HOW I COULD INTERPRET FOR MYSELF
amd finally IT WON’T BE FIT OR EQUAL TO YOUR MEANING.
Please do not let your partners in conversation in dark about your thoughts and please precise it with some additional words what you mean accurately on your statement !
Thank you in advance –