Two simultaneous users?

[grcar]

So the Mac Pro has two graphics chips. Is it possible to connect two monitors, keyboards, mice or whatever so that two users can login to their own accounts simultaneously?

 

[Intell]

No, OS X cannot do this yet without Screen Sharing.

 

[ActionableMango]

No, one of the graphics cards has no video outputs at all. Also OS X doesn't support multiple users at the same time. All connected mouse and keyboard devices will be applied to the one user currently logged in.

You could do this in theory using VM software such as Parallels or VMWare. These let you assign USB devices to either the physical machine or the VM, so theoretically you could run a second copy of OS X in a VM, assign your second keyboard and mouse to it, and move the VM window to a second monitor. But I've never seen anyone try this so I don't think it's been confirmed to work.

 

[h9826790]

You could do this in theory using VM software such as Parallels or VMWare. These let you assign USB devices to either the physical machine or the VM, so theoretically you could run a second copy of OS X in a VM, assign your second keyboard and mouse to it, and move the VM window to a second monitor. But I've never seen anyone try this so I don't think it's been confirmed to work.

I did that and it works. However, it has nothing to do with the 2nd GPU. And there is no way to assign the whole 2nd GPU for the VM to use.

So, it's do-able, the 2nd GPU is not required, but OP can't take any benefit from the 2nd GPU with this setup.

 

[ActionableMango]

I did that and it works.

That's great to know! I've suggested this a few times now, but rather meekly since I haven't seen anyone do it yet.

I'm curious, which VM software and which host and guest operating systems do you use for this?

 

[h9826790]

Software: Parallel

Host: OSX
Guest: Windows (OSX works as well, but no GPU acceleration, the UI will be very choppy).

For multiple User simultaneous OSX desktop operation. I will use Google remote for the second user (already login in the host computer, but not active), it's good enough for simple ops. And won't affect the primary (active) user in the host computer.

 

[ActionableMango]

Software: Parallel

Host: OSX
Guest: Windows (OSX works as well, but no GPU acceleration, the UI will be very choppy).

For multiple User simultaneous OSX desktop operation. I will use Google remote for the second user (already login in the host computer, but not active), it's good enough for simple ops. And won't affect the primary (active) user in the host computer.

Thanks for the reply. Interesting stuff.

That's too bad there's no GPU acceleration for an OS X guest even on a Mac with an OS X host.