Hi all!

I got this question... I need to display desktop directly when the computer boots up. (without the login screen) I saw that on Mandrake..... how can I do such thing in Fedora?

The computers will be public terminals for surfing the net.

In addition to that I need this:

"Lock" all applications except for Firefox.
"Lock" all setting of Firefox and Gnome.
Some background program checking if Firefox is running and when Firefox closes, that program will re-open it.
I saw this on some public computers in Library, there was FreeBSD+Gnome+Mozilla.

If possible, I need those setting to be applicable by config files that I can save to diskette, because I need to configure many computers.

I am no Linux guru, but I can edit a config file.

Thanks for any advice/link

u can do automatic user login from menu->System Settings->login Screen.

actually, you don't have to run gnome at all normally when a runlevel starts the last thing done is show a terminal with a login program on a console. make a custom runlevel (say 5) wich replaces the login program with a script like this:

X &
firefox

you may change this in the /etc/inittab file, but beware: this may render a system useless if you don't make a backup and have your rescue disk ready!
you can make this such that it reloads itself after it is closed, just like the login program. I made this setup once in slackware with the opera webbrowser in kiosk mode. you can configure opera to disable program exit and options in kiosk mode (see opera --help for more info). I know opera is much heavier than firefox but it has the options especially for this purpose. I don't know fedora so I can't give you the detailed setup... If you want a setup like this I need more info on fedore, like /etc/inittab and the bootscripts (/etc/rc.d or /etc/rc.boot or /etc/rc.init..?)

greetz,
.-=~ iluvatar ~=-.

ps: another setup is to use runlevel 4 (start X immediatly) and hack a bit in the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc files easier to do and won't render the system useless. also possible to skip loading gnome...
there's even another option, that's to edit the ~/.xinitrc file of the user you want to log in automaticly...