Forty client studios that share atoms, not files

Forty clients, forty containers, each one a studio: the same Krita and Inkscape install, that client's brand assets, that client's work in progress. Total isolation: client A's files can never appear in client B's open-recent list.

Forty duplicate desktops should be ruinous. They aren't, because the duplication is exactly what the substrate folds away. Cloned from one template, the studios share their disk blocks copy-on-write; the shared kernel caches the common binaries once; idle studios burn no CPU. Forty mostly-idle studios cost barely more than one busy one, all on a single flat-rate bare metal box.

Between engagements a studio just sits there: idle, intact, costing nothing meaningful: until the client comes back and their exact desk is waiting.

The studios share atoms, not files: and the bill barely notices the duplicates.