Ubuntu Kiosk?

[email.listen at googlemail.com]

Am Thu, 11. May 2006 06:11 schrieb Charles Yao:
> On 5/11/06, email.listen at googlemail.com <email.listen at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Am Wed, 10. May 2006 20:36 schrieb Daniel Carrera:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > A local school is interested in trying out Linux. I will setup a room
> > > with thin clients running from an Edubuntu server. I just have one
> > > concern: Last year I did this with another school. I setup a single
> > > user account which all the students shared. This worked alright except
> > > for OpenOffice. If two students started OpenOffice the second one would
> > > see an error saying that OOo was running. I never found a solution for
> > > this.
> > >
> > > I'd like to setup something Kiosk-style. I don't want to hand out 600
> > > user names and passwords. I have no idea how to setup a thin client
> > > Kiosk. Any suggestions? Can anyone point me in the right direction?
> >
> > KDE kiosktool is what you are looking for.
> >
> > kiosktool
> > Description: tool to configure the KDE kiosk framework
> > A Point&Click tool for system administrators to enable
> > KDE's KIOSK features or otherwise preconfigure KDE for
> > groups of users.
> >
> > E.g. it is used by cosmopod.com to restrict the user desktop for their
> > nomachine accounts.
> >
> > For a single classromm and not more than 20 pupils systems like
> > skolelinux,
> > RedHat K12 or edubuntu will cope your needs. I would recomend skolelinux
> > or
> > K12 because they offer a lot of 'automagically' predefined services as
> > user
> > accounts stored in ldap, centralised administration and others.
> >
> > But for a more complex environment, eg. several classrooms and a lot of
> > users
> > you will see that they lack a lot of performance. This mostly because of
> > network limitations (not more than one subnet) and because of the use of
> > LTSP
> > which has a bigger bandwith footprint than nomachine/NX.
> >
> > For such environment I would suggest a better scaling systems e.g.
> > OpenSchool
> > Server (OSS) [1] from EXTIS (OSS is the former SUSE OSS).
> > OSS offers a lot of predefined services, those offered by skolelinux, k12
> > plus
> > groupware, elearning environment and others.
> >
> > It don't offer a preconfigured LTSP. But I don't see this as a
> > disadvantage,
> > IMHO it's more an advantqage...
> >
> > I set up such a system with an nomachine service (wich is easy to set up)
> > As
> > thin-client systems I used thinstation [2]. Thinstation is a linux based
> > terminal client system which allows connections to nomachine, Cisco
> > Terminal
> > Services,  MS Terminal Server and a lot others. So it is much more
> > flexible
> > than having LTSP only.
> >
> > This system is serving a big vocational school /Berufsschule, BBS-II), 24
> > classrooms having 12 to 24 machines each. And it is serving more than
> > 2500 user accounts in the moment. Every student has a personalized home
> > directory,
> > is able to use email, irc, web,... The system and all of its services can
> > be
> > used from inside the school and from outside the school, e.g. at home.
> >
> > Plus a big set of squidgard rules for web access, which is a legal must
> > here
> > in germany to protect pupils.
> >
> > Not to forget the use of kiosktool to configure/restrict the users
> > desktop.
> > The desktop predefinition/restriction is group based so that there is a
> > better
> > flexibility in giving more functionality over the years.
> >
> > [...]
> > [1] http://www.openschoolserver.net/
> > [2] http://www.thinstation.org/
[...]
>
> Is it possible to run LTSP if the Kiosks were wireless?

Never tried LTSP on a wireless thin client.
But this should work the same way as with a regular wire based NIC.
If the NIC has some kind of boot prom (what is needed for a wire based NIC), 
if it supports PXE. 
Or if the laptop has a floppy drive/harddisk/cdrom to have linboot running. 
The only problem you may have to face is the lack of xwindow drivers for 
some 'exotic' video devices especially in older laptops. But this is a common 
known problem with old laptops regardless if it is LTSP or other mechanisms 
using X. There should be a list of supported video devices somewhere in the 
LTSP documentation.


For nomachine/NX, I'm using this with old laptops (i468) as administration 
terminal on servers which have no keyboard and monitor. Most laptops fit into 
a rack mountable drawer below the server rack.


But to be honest after running nomachine/thinstation for a while I can't see a 
need for LTSP anymore. If you plan to set up a new environment/classroom IMO 
it will be better to invest your efforts in setting up a nomachine based 
terminal server / thin client solution.


regards,
thomas