I'm looking for hint on how to start a project. I want to boot up to a GUI that I will be creating. I will most likely use perl/TK because that's what I know. I want the user to have a mouse to work with the GUI. I was thinking I would use a X server and tell it to run my application. If the application dies I would monitor for it dieing and restart it. I would include buttons to restart and shutdown the machine in my GUI. I don't want the user to have access to the desktop or linux system underneath, unless I allow it. I know companies do this all the time I'm just not sure how to do it myself. I will probably use ubuntu but as time goes on I might go for something more striped down. I'm not sure I'm using the right terms but if someone could give me a direction to run I will figure out the details.

Thank you

probably you need xinit. It will start X and your client and will die if your cliend died. (there will be no desktop and/or other GUI displayed, just your client).

I think what you mean is you want to customize some window manager to your tastes. There are many window managers available already and many ways to limit user permissions and tasks.

See if some sort of "kiosk" setup is what you are talking about.
Many distro's can already be placed in a kiosk mode.


See this also. http://www.xpud.org/

Look for "kiosk mode" of operation. That is what it is for.

Different display managers (logins) handle it in different ways/configurations.