Kiosk setup for KK

[jhy2a]

I am the new guy at my company, and as it turns out, I am new to Linux. I have never had to work with Linux before. As a way of "exposing" me to Linux, my boss assigned me the task of setting up 2 machines so that the employees can review their benefits information. These 2 machines are supposed to run Linux and his suggestion was to use Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I have downloaded and created install disks for both (using vs. 9.10). Here is my delima: I have seen all kinds of references to OpenKiosk and Kiosktool, but nothing on how to install them using the newest release of Kubuntu (the newest version I can find any mention of them on was version 6.XX of Kubuntu). Can someone help me with how to get either OpenKiosk or Kiosktool installed, and also a how to on their configuration specifically for the newest version of Kubuntu Do either of them work on the newest release even? Any help you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Kiosk setup for KK

You have several alternatives.
If you can use firefox to display the information, then you can use the open kiosk extension for firefox to lock down firefox itself.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/509

If you need to secure the system itself (which you probably don't if this is for employees only) then you can lock down KDE itself with the KDE Kiosk Admin tool:

http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kiosktool/

Further information on locking down KDE is here:

http://enterprise.kde.org/articles/kiosk-lp.php

And the openkiosk project, which you would have to compile from sourcecode, probably more advanced than you want to do at this point:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/openkiosk/

EDIT: I stand corrected, it looiks lioke the kiosk admin tool for kde is only for kde-3.xx.
Still searching...

[jhy2a]

Re: Kiosk setup for KK

So then it looks like in order for me to achieve what I want, I am going to have to install an earlier version of Kubuntu. This is not what I had in mind but, I have a tight deadline on this project and I don't see that I have an alternative at this point in time.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Kiosk setup for KK

Yep, unless you want to fight through manually locking up kde, then it looks like the kde-3.5 remix might be the way to go. Then you can get kiosktool to work.
But do you need to lock the computer up that tight, in the environment where it will be used?
(Just a rhetorical question)

[jhy2a]

Re: Kiosk setup for KK

Actually, the answer to that is yes. While most of the people who are going to be using this system are not even computer literate, let alone Linux literate, we do have several employees who are avid Linux users would love nothing more than to muck up these 2 machines just to do it. I hate the fact that they work for us, but they do.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Kiosk setup for KK

Sad, but so be it. Just remember to disable the CD drive when you're finished -- if you can put in a live cd to set it up, so can they.

[Detonate]

Re: Kiosk setup for KK

You might take a look at:

http://webconverger.com/

a linux distro especially for kiosks. I have no experience with it, just happened to read about it the other day.

[jhy2a]

Re: Kiosk setup for KK

i don't think webconverger is really what I am looking for either. For instance, I do want the employees to be able to print. Webconverger is simply booting from a live CD and at that point, it does not look like it has support for printers. I really need the printer access as they will be printing off check stubs as part of this system so as you can now understand, it has to be a full OS, just locked down tight.