Custom close/minimize button
 

I have a problem. My company has 15 computers that were purchased about three years ago and never used, don't ask. We don't want to spend any money on upgrading. They are celeron 500 with 128M of memory, the hard drive is a laptop drive that runs extremely slow. Windows 98 is installed on them and runs incredibly slow. I put suse 9.1 on one and fedora core 2 on another for testing. They will be used for complimentary internet stations for our clients. These computers will be used a lot. At each location we have anywhere from 200 - 1000 clients come through the door on a daily basis, great exposure for linux.

They will be a bare system with firefox as the only option available to run. It takes 10 - 15 seconds for firefox to start up. I think I have optimized the system as much as possible. This will not do for our clients, so here is my idea:

I want to start firefox and leave it running. When the X is clicked on the window to close the program I want it to be minimized instead of closed. Then when the firefox icon is clicked it will maximize the program. This will give the illusion of immediate start up of firefox. Is this possible? I am going to use fluxbox or gnome? Does anyone have any input or is this a dumb idea? I also need to consider changing the web page location or kill off a session in case anyone just "closes" their email. Any other ideas or if anyone can point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

there is a good howto about setting up a pc just for that case. you can spare out lot more things . iirc it's called something "kiosk". have a look at www.tldp.org

sl mritch.