Re: Which window-manager for a kiosk?

[Pete Harlan <harlan@artselect.com>]

You can launch your startup app from /etc/inittab.  I used to work for
a company that installed kiosks, and this is how we did it.  We ran
our own app, not a browser, and our X needs were very minimal.  No
window manager, no windows except our one, no keyboard, no mouse
(touchscreen only), etc.  Just run X or startx or whatever right out
of inittab, giving the app as the startup argument.

The default runlevel put us in kiosk mode.  If we wanted a more normal
box, for maintenance or development, we'd switch runlevels.  It worked
very well.

Best of luck,

--Pete


On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 10:19:44PM +0100, Karsten Heymann wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 11:41:35AM -0600, Kent West wrote:
> > Which window manager will give me the ability to size/move/close/etc 
> > windows, but without the ability to start other programs, etc. I want a 
> > kiosk style setup, on a low-memory machine. ICEWM has that menu at the 
> > bottom with the "Start" menu, so it's unsuitable. I tried twm, but I 
> > have to manually place the default app (Galeon) when it starts or when a 
> > new window is opened by the web site being visited, and I would prefer 
> > the window to just take the entire screen or at least not require manual 
> > placement.
> > 
> > Any suggestions?
> 
> I suggest (all untested):
> 
>  - use no window manager
>  - start galeon in fullscreen mode from .xinitrc or .xsession
>  - map away the F11-Key with xmodmap
>  - maybe disable C-A-F[1-12]
>  - maybe disable C-A-Backspace
>  - disable most mime stuff to prevent the start of external viewers
>  - have galeon automatically restart if it exits
> 
> That should keep the system quite closed. As I didn't test that,
> suggestions are welcome!
> 
> Greets,
> 
> Karsten