Better user detection for when people use their laptops

[kinn-edendev]

I was thinking about how to better show how non-logged in users are sitting at the desktops. A number of people plug their laptops in using either the HDMI, Displayport, or USB-C, and the Nix config we're using offers a couple services which can be scraped and used to determine when someone is using a setup with only the monitors.

On the desktops, tools like kscreen-doctor are able to show information on the video output cables which are plugged in. A way to determine if a computer is being used with a laptop is to take a preliminary count of how many displays are plugged into a machine and use that as a baseline, and after that you could check if any deviation from that baseline would be understood as someone is using that desktop with their laptop. On the labmap, it would just spawn a generic waddles to the desktop without any customization options.

From my initial testing it works with detecting HDMI and Displayport, but in the case that USB-C doesn't show up when being used as a display on kscreen-doctor, then parsing the output of lsusb may be another way to perform the same checks.

[jaysa68]

I think we also need to discuss the larger question of if we want people plugging in their laptops to the desktops whatsoever. We've never completely solved the problem of people switching the display back after removing their laptop, making this a constant maintenance task for opstaff and volstaff.

OCF staff should be dogfooding the desktops... this is only possible if we write better documentation on using nix and home-manager, of course. But ideally they'd be more than just printing machines... they could be a solid introduction to linux on the desktop for Berkeley students (which aligns with the OCF's focus on FOSS), if we actually use them ourselves to find bugs & improve the experience.