While I don't administer a library, I deal with lots of non-employees (as well as lots-of-handholding-required CEO types) using various LTSP-based terminals that I administer.
It works beautifully! Most motherboards I've found now support PXE booting, so without having to buy BootROMs for any NICs, or buying custom terminals, or having a floppy drive hidden inside the case I can have very cheap terminals. It's fast and easy to administer.
If you haven't set up a server system before, use Mandrake/RedHat/SuSE just to get it up and running.
That being said, it's insanely nice to have Debian's "apt-get install anything" and have software "just work" instead of chasing down various RPMs. I use Debian/testing (Sarge) in many production environments quite nicely.
Also, invest the time into customizing a lightweight stripped-down desktop environment (like icewm) with only the programs listed that you want the user to run. You don't want the user to have flexibility.
If you absolutely *must* have MS Office, Wine is decent, Crossover makes it easy to install/manage. But all you're doing yourself is opening yourself up to potential problems.
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if you want to run this on OpenBSD (and possibly other *BSD systems), change /dev/random to /dev/prandom
$ while [ i = i ] /dev/null
do
wget http://www.e360insight.com/Motion-for-TRO.pdf -O
done
that should do it!
While I don't administer a library, I deal with lots of non-employees (as well as lots-of-handholding-required CEO types) using various LTSP-based terminals that I administer. It works beautifully! Most motherboards I've found now support PXE booting, so without having to buy BootROMs for any NICs, or buying custom terminals, or having a floppy drive hidden inside the case I can have very cheap terminals. It's fast and easy to administer. If you haven't set up a server system before, use Mandrake/RedHat/SuSE just to get it up and running. That being said, it's insanely nice to have Debian's "apt-get install anything" and have software "just work" instead of chasing down various RPMs. I use Debian/testing (Sarge) in many production environments quite nicely. Also, invest the time into customizing a lightweight stripped-down desktop environment (like icewm) with only the programs listed that you want the user to run. You don't want the user to have flexibility. If you absolutely *must* have MS Office, Wine is decent, Crossover makes it easy to install/manage. But all you're doing yourself is opening yourself up to potential problems.