Webs’ Random Ideas

This is really more of an update to my project of creating an Internet Kiosk Management Server.

The gist of the project is this: Currently we have a boot CD Linux distribution for Internet Kiosks, or walk up Internet/Email stations at work. What this means is that I have a Boot CD with a fully contained Operating System that runs off the CD. So no hard drive or floppy is needed. The system boots directly into Mozilla Firefox with no other applications or options available to the user.

Sounds wonderful right? Well yes, but I have been running into issues with this current system, called Boothbox. As mentioned in my previous posts on this topic, I have run into issues getting Boothbox to run on Dell Hardware. The problem is Boothbox is based on a really old kernel. And updating the kernel in Boothbox just wasn’t working out for me at all.

So a new system is in store.

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So I would like to bring up this topic again (I’ve written about this before, once here and another time here) in hopes I can finally complete what I set out to do awhile back. Get Boothbox working on Dell hardware.

Now that I’ve made that statement it’s time for a curve ball. I think I’m going to scrap Boothbox all together. It’s no longer under development and I am having a lot of trouble re-compiling the kernel so it runs on Dell hardware. The lack of support for Boothbox is just killing me.

So here’s my new idea. Create an Ubuntu Server that is fully configurable and have dummy terminal clients that boot from CD and load a terminal session from the Ubuntu server. Being based off Ubuntu means good hardware support and using a distro that is not likely to go away any time soon. The terminal clients would also be secure in having no local storage as no hard drive is needed.

Eventually the terminal clients will need touch screen support and quite a few scripts to run other items and lock down certain apps. Either way, for now I am going to test the waters and see what happens. If it looks like the idea is feasible I might create a SourceForge project and post more info there. We’ll see what happens.

For now I will post updates on my blog for this project. Officially titled: “Kiosk Ubuntu”.