Hi everybody. I've got a really bizarre question, and I figured the 'general' forum was the best place for it. I'm going to setup the situation first, and then ask you all what you think I should do. I think that will help clarify what I'm asking about.

Situation:
I work for a local community college. We just recently implemented a web-based registration process. Now the registration room wants to have workstations that are web-enabled for students to use to register. Pretty straight forward so far... We currently have 6 old PCs running Windows XP for this purpose. These machines are over-burdened with the XP OS, and this allows the students too much freedom for other things (web-games, chat, etc.) I realize that we could manage these systems with windows group or machine policies, but I suggested that we run a stripped down Linux installation and mozilla-based web browser.

Question:
I have been given the permission to look into the forementioned alternative. I was thinking about a Debian network install and only picking the packages needed to get a browser going. The core of my question is... What are the minimum packages to get a graphical based browser loaded? Can I do it without loading KDE, and it's numerous 'productivity' packages? Is this idea viable, or is it more work than it is worth?

My main reason for this post it to get ideas from others, since I am basically the only Linux afficiando on campus. (I never said this place was progressive)

Thanks for your time and input everybody.

Run XFCE or fluxbox or some other really light desktop.

Start out with something like Damn Small Linux, and customize it a bit. You could even remaster to run a live-cd system rather than off a hard-drive.

DSL is a good thought, I'll definitely look into it. Is 're-mastering' difficult? I didn't know you could do that.

Not sure... I recently ran across an article and thought I might give it a try, when I have a couple spare minutes someday.

Check out these pages on hardening Firefox as a kiosk browser and restricting it to certain adresses. They are a bit outdated, but the Mozillazine forums should be able to help you overcome any problems.

http://tln.lib.mi.us/~amutch/pro/phoenix/kiosk.htm
http://tln.lib.mi.us/~amutch/pro/phoenix/proxies.htm

I will definintely check out those links!! THANKS!

I had a similar problem. After looking at different kiosk projects I decided to use suse 9.1. Auto login to minimal kde. I removed the panel, icons and window buttons (close,minimize etc...), put up a background that says program loading please wait. Then in ~/.kde/Autostart it put in a script:

#!/bin/bash

while true ; do
/opt/firefox/./firefox (or your firefox install location)
done

When kde starts it starts firefox. When someone closes firefox (I haven't figured out how to remove the menus in firefox) it start right back up. It serves my purpose as an internet kiosk at our locations. I got most of my info from the kiosk projects but this works really nice. I am going to change to fluxbox to free up the system when I get time and I feel there is more control over what you have access to. Hope this can help out some.

That is a really good idea, do you know if that script will work with FLUXBOX, I think that will be my window manager of choice for this project. I wasn't sure how I was going to deal with the shutdown of FireFox, but I assumed that it was addressed in the kiosk link that David posted.

Thanks for all the really good suggestions, if I can pull this off, this project might just show everyone here just how powerful a tool Linux is!

Thanks again, and keep em coming!

I'm pleased to report the the project has finally made some progress. Some of your suggestiosn have turned out to be very helpful. I'm still having some difficulty getting the environment just right.

Here's what I have sofar...

DSL 0.8.3 as a HD install, Fluxbox with an install of XFree86 (for better vid card support) I installed the myDSL link for Firefox 1.0 PR and configured it to run at startup. That's it in a nutshell

During my installation process, I figured out how to make firefox run without a window manager. This is a VERY interesting option, but I cant seem to get firefox to run in a fullscreen mode by default. If anyone knows of a method ot maximize firefox I'll have thing in the bag.

I tried the command line switches -height and -width but it seems to have no effect on the size of the firefox window.

Thanks in advance

F11 maximizes firefox and also gets rid of your menubar. You're left with nothing but the browser and address bar.

There might be a way to start firefox like this, but I'm not sure

--Shade