[CentOS] Multiple program instances or multiple log ins? -- Thunderbird profiles ...

[Robert Moskowitz]

At 04:15 PM 12/27/2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> wrote:
>
>
> > At any time I could have switched to a single executing
> > copy of Eudora with multiple personalities.
> > But I chose not to.
>
>Eudora is not designed for the 1:1 setup.
>Outlook Express is not designed for the 1:1 setup.
>[Mozilla] Thunderbird is not designed for the 1:1 setup.
>
>As an enterprise administrator, I want a 1:1
>user:object-framework setup when users login.

This part of the reason why the IT folks and us research/testing 
folks tend to get at loggerhead!

Why I would never make the move ot Outlook.  But I see I will be 
peeling the cover off of Thunderbird.



>In addition to having the ability and separation of multiple
>e-mail accounts, the "Personalities" are called "Profiles" in
>Thunderbird.  By default, the "default" profile is always
>used (and _not_ prompted for) in Thunderbird.
>
>Here's how you launch the profile manager in various OSes for
>Thunderbird:
>   http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile

Sometime in the past I used this with Netscape 7, perhaps?  So it all 
started coming 'back' to me.


>Namely, you need to pass the "-profilemanager" option.
>
>Once you have multiple profiles, when you launch Thunderbird,
>it will prompt you for which one (unless you click the box
>"Don't ask at startup").
>
>If you already have one running, you will want to pass the
>option again.  Otherwise, the currently running profile may
>be assumed.

I see that running multiple Thunderbirds doesn't work according to 
this article, but I wonder if this is a windows centric answer, not 
applying to unix.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Run_multiple_copies_of_Thunderbird_at_the_same_time

> > I run the others a couple times a day (desktop DOES get
> > cluttered and memory consumed).
> > All the work documents and mail are organized by identity.
> > So I am leaning more and more to separate linux users.
>
>No, that's _overkill_ for what you want.

good!

> > After finding more gnome documentation, I see they call
> > them workspaces.
>
>Yes, I know.  Desktops, workspaces, viewports, etc...  In
>old, original "virtual window manager" speak, it's the
>"pager."  The idea that you can "page around" multiple areas
>of the X session so it seems you have a much bigger desktop
>than normal.

And when you did, you brought the network to a standstill.  I 
'caught' some of our unix support people doing this with our network 
sniffer.  After that we got a LOT more memory for those X-terminals 
so that they were not always getting refreshes from their clients (it 
was always a lot of fun with Xwindows and SNMP in explaining that 
they had the client/server model reversed).


> > But then we are not running the same Un*x on the same
> > platforms, terminals, networks that we were then.
>
>Who says?  The concepts are _exactly_ the _same_ today on
>Linux!

But at least now we have the memory and processor to support this.

Motorla tried to sell us a system and showed our execs how they ran 
it in their office.  Seemed so nice and efficient.  I was able to 
figure out that they were running a FDDI backbone and only 5 
workstations per ethernet segment (all routed).

The concepts have not changed.  The hardware finally caught up.

Did you see that John Diebold passed away.  Now THERE was a man 
proposing solutions a decade or more before they became 'real'.

>1984 c/o MIT and Digital (among others).  It was loosely
>based on "w", which pre-dates even Apple's Lisa (circa 1982).

That Lisa was an abomination.

>[ **NOTE:  The next-generation of GNOME is adopting the .NET
>object framework, so objects and applications will be at
>least source-code compatible with MS .NET, if not Common
>Language Runtime (CLR) compatible.  The same people behind
>the open Mono implementation were the same people who
>designed GNOME -- and they work for Novell who purchased
>Ximian. ]

Maybe I should move to KDE now?  8-)

>Citrix began around '90 on OS/2.  The OS/2 kernel, unlike the
>NT kernel (with its GDI requirement), could support multiple
>sessions, and run a GUI atop of each session.

The thing that killed OS/2 was the lack of TCP/IP support.  I had 
kludged FTP software's drivers in, but the pain was more than Windows 
3.0  with either FTP's or Novell's stack.

>But what really made Citrix was their NT 3.51 hack that
>results in MetaFrame.

And I won't go into the many problems this caused me.  Mostly becuase 
the scars are healed on only the memory of them are left.