Comment 17 for bug 172390

As much as it pains me to say it, the Windows way of handling this on desktops is IMHO current the best - a user list with a simple status display showing that they are already logged in, which resumes their session when they log back in.

Now of course, being able to start additional sessions is the sort of advanced feature that makes Linux great, but it is a power-user feature, not a common use scenario for 90 of users.

Perhaps a workable solution could be that if a user already has a session then a check box appears under the username and password fields that enables them to start a new session. If unchecked (aka. a normal login) and the user already has multiple sessions to resume, a list of the user's sessions could be displayed which they could then choose which to resume from.

As functional as it is, the CTRL+ALT+Fn combos in use are not intuitive in the slightest to all of the normal users I've tried to explain them to (if for nothing else then they have no idea which order others have logged in, so have no idea which combo to use as there are no visual indications of this anywhere).

IHMO, ideally as much should be able to be accomplished as possible with just the mouse, and always catering for the most prevalent use case.