On my graphical desktop ubuntu computer, I can start multiple parallel sessions with the same user. Is this a bug? If it's a feature, what is the purpose behind it?
To do this, I click on "New Session" under the "Leave" menu. That brings up a menu where I can choose between several sessions to switch to, or click a button labelled "New Session". Clicking "New Session" brings up the following menu:
There's another button here called "New Session", and if I click it, it comes up with another menu:
where I can select my user from the list and enter my password to log in. I can then do the whole thing again to start a third session (and fourth…). To get back my original session, I logged out and was then able to log into the "parent" session.
The first time this happened was an accident, as I didn't realise I still had a session running. It led to interesting issues such as firefox and libreoffice failing to start, as they were locked to the other session.
P.S. This is all directly at the computer itself, no remote desktops or ssh.
Best Answer
The purpose behind it is perhaps "just because". If that feature irritates you, you should be able to switch it off by removing the sessions menu in the display manager (LightDM, SDDM) login configuration, if possible.