Hi all,

Hope this is the right forum for this. I'm new to Linux but I'm hoping to learn more.

My idea is to set up an offline kiosk using an old Dell D620 laptop. It will be used at trade fairs and other public places, and it is for one very simple purpose: to allow people to sign up their names and e-mail addresses in order to receive newsletters and promo mails.

The ideal thing would be to have a completely offline solution, with the OS installed on the hard drive (to avoid tampering with USB sticks etc) and some kind of local web server running, with a simple form on a locked-down browser that allow for saving input data to the hard drive. Then, at the end of the day, you just plug in a USB stick and transfer the database/stored info.

So which distro would you recommend? The easier to set up the better since I'm no programmer.

Surely this must have been done before. However when googling I only come up with online solutions booting from USB drives. I've read about Porteus and other kiosk-optimised distros as well, but I'm not sure which one to choose. Preferably it should not wipe the drive at every reboot, but perhaps input data could be stored to another partition.

All suggestions are very welcome. Thank you!

/ kruxer

Is there any particular reason you want to do it with a web page? That will naturally necessitate not only a web server but a browser, which seems to add unnecessary complication to a simple task.

Since you aren't a programmer (and presumably will have to learn this stuff from scratch for the purposes of this project), writing the software in something like Java would give you an easy to deploy tool that wouldn't require all the prerequisites of a browser based solution.

I've just checked the Porteus site and the kiosk edition will install on a hard drive:
http://www.porteus.org/faq/kiosk-faq.html
http://build.porteus.org/kiosk/

Thanks for replying! No, it definitely doesn't have to web-based. I'm no good at Java either but your idea is interesting. Are there modules available that could be easily modified? And can this be locked down hard?

The form should look something like this:

(png or jpg logo)

Yes, please add me to your mailing list!

Name:
Company:
E-mail:

and maybe one or a couple of tick boxes:
# Send me information about .... (product/s)
# Call me to book a visit/demonstration [/INDENT]

It's definitely an advantage if the fields can be easily modified.

Thanks, yes I know. Tried it briefly but it wouldn't load. I probably did something wrong. There are all sorts of parameters you have to set up before downloading. But I wonder if this is the way to go.

I wonder if this might be useful: http://openkiosk.sourceforge.net/