[vox-tech] Linux Kiosk Distro

[Tony Cratz]

On 06/12/2012 12:57 PM, Thomas Johnston wrote:
> A friend of mine asked me if I could help him with a project: building
> an internet kiosk machine running some flavor of Linux. The computer is
> to be used by the public in his volunteer organization. I said I have no
> real exerience with that, but I would give it a shot. I have done some
> searching online and it looks like there are many ways to go about the
> project but I thought I would solicit advice from Lugod before getting
> too far into it. I noticed that there are several hundred posts
> regarding "kiosks" on vox-tech.
>  
> Some requirements/desires:
> It needs to be free, or very close to free.
> We would like users to have web browser access and that's it. The web
> browswer should have Active X support (I am leaning towards Chromium)
> If the user could be presented with a fullscreen browser and nothing
> else, that would be great.
> Requires little to no maintenance.

	First check out freecode.com for kiosk set-up. Every so often I
	see another one mention (disclaimer: I have not tried any of
	them).

	Next a key question to ask is, will the kiosk be used on the
	Internet or only on a local network. If on the Internet what
	type of steps are you going to take to prevent a person from
	hitting porn sites? Sqiud and Dansguardian is a good solution.
	But you might also want to have a private name server all of
	the kiosks use.

	Third, will these all be on the same network or in different
	locations? Same network is a big plus.

	And last, look at how to create a X11 Session which forces
	your browser to be the default program. Some people who run
	XBMC do this.


							Tony