initial thoughts on ltsp kiosk plugin

[Jonathan Carter]

Hi Gavin

Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> 1. for some reason metacity didn't install.  I didn't get a log of the
>    ltsp-build-client, but for some reason, metacity didn't install and
>    therefore firefox is running window manager-less.  I presume this is
>    not deliberate as ~kiosk/.xsession tries to invoke metacity.

I *think* the bug is actually that .xsession calls metacity. From what I 
vaguely remember from an IRC discussion with ogra, Firefox is supposed 
to run windowless and full-screen. I may be wrong though, either way, 
there's a bug.

> 2. I don't imagine this is something that will be changed but I added
>    sun-java5-plugin and flashplugin-nonfree in the chroot to make sites
>    that use these work better.

I think once Java is free, it will be nice to include it as an option 
for the build client script. Including GNU Gnash by default would also 
be great, imho.

> 3. I tried out sound with a couple of flash sites.  It didn't work, though
>    it was clear that there was static on the headphones which was
>    correlated to the sound I should have been getting.  This may be flash
>    specific, I'm not sure.

Flash sucks. :)

> 4. firefox didn't go into full screen.  This may be related to the lack of
>    window manager, I'm not sure.  If you press [F11] it did.

Hmmm.. perhaps it is supposed to use metacity after all. I just assumed 
it used the Firefox kiosk plugin to get to full-screen.

> 6. RAM seems in reasonable supply (just lots being cached), but I'm not
>    certain if this is a good measure.
> 	$ free
> 	             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> 	Mem:        125224     118516       6708          0          0      53492
> 	-/+ buffers/cache:      65024      60200
> 	Swap:        32760        724      32036

Firefox LOVES RAM! And on top of that, it has some nasty unfixed memory 
leak bugs :(

What seems best for most people is to just restart Firefox at least once 
a day.

> 6. I'm thinking of ways we could perhaps expand on this.  Perhaps: 
>    - a DVD player kiosk
>    - add a multimedia player plugin to the existing firefox kiosk
>    - make a simple application kiosk usable with data or even home
>      directory stored on USB key.
>    As we have very little time to give accounts to all students, it's
>    possible this route might help give greater access to students.

All of those are great ideas. The USB home one is the most important in 
my opinion. IIRC, Scott Balneaves had some ideas for persistent homes 
with LTSP. Perhaps now is a good time to get that implemented.

-Jonathan