Ubuntu Kiosk?

[Daniel Carrera]

email.listen at googlemail.com wrote:
> KDE kiosktool is what you are looking for.
> 
> kiosktool 
> Description: tool to configure the KDE kiosk framework
>  A Point&Click tool for system administrators to enable
>  KDE's KIOSK features or otherwise preconfigure KDE for
>  groups of users.

Are you sure that's what I'm looking for? Inspite of the name, it looks 
like this tool is for locking-down the accounts, or making all the 
accounts similar. Though this can be useful, it is not what I'm asking 
about. I'm asking about an easy way to setup a thin-client computer room 
that can be shared among 600 pupils. People have suggested that instead 
of creating 600 accounts I just create 10, one for each PC. So far this 
seems like the best solution.

I'll keep kiosktool in mind though. I expect they'll ask me to lock down 
the accounts. Though I was thinking of giving them Gnome, not KDE.

> For a single classromm and not more than 20 pupils systems like skolelinux, 
> RedHat K12 or edubuntu will cope your needs. I would recomend skolelinux or 
> K12 because they offer a lot of 'automagically' predefined services as user 
> accounts stored in ldap, centralised administration and others.

I was thinking of using Edubuntu because it seems easier to setup, and I 
can reuse my Ubuntu skills.

> But for a more complex environment, ... nomachine/NX.

I'm not familiar with NX. I'll take a look. Thanks.

> For such environment I would suggest a better scaling systems e.g. OpenSchool 
> Server (OSS) [1] from EXTIS (OSS is the former SUSE OSS). 
> OSS offers a lot of predefined services, those offered by skolelinux, k12 plus 
> groupware, elearning environment and others.

If it comes from SuSE it'll be even more distant from what I'm familiar 
with... :-(

> I set up such a system with an nomachine service (wich is easy to set up) As 
> thin-client systems I used thinstation [2].

Thanks. I'll take a look.

> This system is serving a big vocational school /Berufsschule, BBS-II), 24 
> classrooms having 12 to 24 machines each. And it is serving more than 2500 
> user accounts in the moment. Every student has a personalized home directory, 
> is able to use email, irc, web,...

How do you manage 2500 user accounts? Do you have a script that creates 
the accounts automatically? If there is an easy way to create 600 user 
accounts for this school, I would consider that option. Does this system 
integrate at all with Windows user accounts? I don't know much about the 
Widndows side.


Cheers,
Daniel.
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