You could have more luck with AIO PCs.
Still, one of these days I'll get around to setting up a system like this, just for the fun of it.
I can think of a few applications where it would be fun. Music-making, for example ..
> But I guess, if there were a distribution which sets things up so that 4 or more people can use the same PC, it'd get wider adoption...
That makes no sense, for a few reasons:
The shared computer model is generally replaced by RDP (or similar) to a VM running in the cloud.
Vast majority of people use laptops or other portable computers; using networked applications where resource sharing happens "in the cloud": IE, web applications. The portability of laptops trumps stationary computers.
Furthermore, with modern economics, the computing power to do basic computing is so cheap that "dumb terminals" don't make sense anymore: A computer powerful enough to run a web browser costs about the same as what it would take to make a "dumb terminal".
Remember, a typical smart TV is a computer powerful enough to run a web browser or a general office suite.
Just add a video card and USB card for each head/terminal and pass them into a VM!
(It’s a shame combo video+USB cards don’t exist - would save on slots)
We really don't have an easy way in the modern era to share our PC's in such a way that multiple users have their own keyboard/mouse/video combination, even though our PC's are more than capable of doing this - and the underlying technology is all right there in the kernel - but distro's just don't seem to be catering to this need, since the market hasn't identified it as something that users want.
But I guess, if there were a distribution which sets things up so that 4 or more people can use the same PC, it'd get wider adoption. I see no reason why this isn't practical, especially in cubicle environments - one fat PC for 4 or 5 people, who are mostly just doing web browsing, document editing, and ssh'ing to things, seems like a very interesting and viable service to deliver, distro-wise.
I wonder which distro's are closer to achieving this target, in the grand scheme of things .. seems to me its only a matter of configuring the X server properly, with multiple independent display units, and getting the USB keyboard/mouse dance started ..