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Distributions/Configurations For Specific Uses?

Posted by Hemos on from the narrowing-it-done dept.

Page writes "My college (UMPI) is currently reviewing a proposal to collect old hardware from small businesses and assemble machines for those who do not have a PC. The issue came up as to what linux distro to use that will allow us ease of both setup and ability to lock down the machine so once they are out in the field, they cant be tinkered with by accident (thus preventing problems later). These will be used solely for the purpose of web activities (surfing/mail), and word processing and *THATS IT*. Does anyone have suggestions and an idea about how to go about a standardized (or a sort of embedded) configuration across variable hardware?"

3 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. But what about printing? by billmaly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll guarantee you, once you get these machines out into the world, people will want to print with them. Printers fail and are changed, how will the plans for locked down systems affect the users ability to actually create something? Otherwise, I like the concept.

  2. LTSP / K12LTSP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree with the previous posts about netbooting. Take a gool look at the LTSP / K12LTSP projects. The boot images that are assigned can be modified for specific machines based on MAC address, allowing you to configure lesser hardware to use the processing power of the server, and newer hardware to use its own processing power, with network storage of all ./home directories and apps. You can even use a modified version of DHCPd and an appropreate MacOS image to boot most Mac computers this way.

    Word of warning, do not try and place the LTSP servers in a "server farm", spread them out over the network.

    By having the computers as diskless workstations you can greatly simplify the long-term IT overhead of these systems, while at the same time accomplishing your goals.

    For LTSP See:
    k12ltsp.org
    ltsp.org

    For the modified DHCPd to do Mac NetBooting:
    staff.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/~rlinewe aver/macnb/

  3. Normal install + cleanup login script by InodoroPereyra · · Score: 4, Insightful
    There were a couple similar requests in Slashdot recently, please do a search for more. The simplest idea I read at the time was the following. Do a basic install, configure a simple desktop for a typical user, save the corresponding "/home/user" somewhere as root so nobody can mess it up. Set the PC up only for one user. Then let people login, but make sure that when they log out the only home directory in the machine gets wiped out and the original setup is copied back from the place where it is backed up.

    You will need to probably run a very lightweight desktop such as Xfce, if your hardware is very old. If you use Mandrake, you can play around choosing a minimal set of packages in the install, and then save the packages list on a floppy so that you only need to do the selection once. Installing in the rest of the machines will be much faster. Probably half an hour or so per machine if you do a light install.

    Good luck, and thank you for choosing GNU/Linux :-)