Diskless Linux Kiosks

joestump98 writes: "JWZ (of Netscape and Mozilla fame) has put up an extremely interesting article about using ThinkNic diskless workstations as internet kiosks at his new club, DNA Lounge. Very cool stuff!"

Comments

Re:Will everyone know how to use them?

[servoled]

I am in charge of a SunRay system for a hotel / conference center. We have a total of 120 SunRay systems which are broken up into ~100 guest rooms and 15 public kiosks plus some for me to play around with :). I have almost no complaints about the interface, which just consists of cde with one button, netscape. And since there is some code running to bring netscape up if it crashes, or is closed, most people don't even need to use that button. We give the guests access to some kde games by using a perl script and a web page. The guest is presented with a short description of the games, and if they would like to play one they click on a link. Pretty straightforward.

The moral is that it doesn't matter what it is running behind the scenes as long as the interface they are presented with is good. If you plan to drop them into a vanilla kde, gnome, window maker, etc.. desktop, then people will be confused. But, people don't need all that stuff on a kiosk, they don't care if you do have a phases of the moon program, or a utility to tell them how the system resources are doing. Just set them up with the bare essentials, which in my experience is netscape and a web based email client and a short explanation of how to use it. (I have found imp (www.horde.org/imp) is an excellent choice. It supports pop3 and imap and can be set up with a stock list of email servers or let the guest enter their own. Make sure to tell them that this is not a supported feature, and if they don't know how to get to their email, then they should contact their technical support, not yours.)

My Own Experiences Here

[CrazyLegs]

At the bank I work at, we tried going the diskless kiosk route with spotty success. The environment we have in our 1300 branches is currently OS/2 RIPL'd PCs running a fixed set of apps on a locked-down desktop. Essentially, this is a network station kiosk in function.

Obviously, we're looking to get off OS/2 - yet still maintain the spirit of network-booting, locked down environment. We pilotted some IBM Network Station devices. Essentially, these are Unix kiosks - some highlights:

• support DHCP
• use BOOTP to bring themselves to life
• loads apps off the BOOTP server
• support Java natively
• includes a Netscape-variant browser
• supports ICA protocol to get those nasty Win32 apps
• supports user-developed apps (browser, Java)
• PowerPC chip, no disk, loads'o'RAM, sound, etc.

The devices (and Unix kiosk concept) worked really well for us. However, we chose not to implement them for the simple fact that no swapping capability exists. That is, the diskless device, by definition, supports a flat memory model. Therefore, new apps that are introduced there must be analyzed for memory requirements and the RAM must be adjusted accordingly. In our bank, where existing apps change and new apps get introduced regularly, the flat-memory model was not acceptable.

However, for true public kiosk applications where the app profile does not change with any kind frequency, I think the diskless kiosk notion can work very well.