School starts in 8 days, but I started back at school a couple of weeks ago. We had a string of break-ins on campus at the end of last year and while the thief initially (and surprisingly) didn't take anything aside from a few dollars laying around during the first two incidents, he eventually wised up and swiped a laptop.
In any case, I had some work to do processing some new equipment brought in for different situations like the one above, and of course I wanted to make a little progress on the Ubuntu servers we have in the labs and classrooms to see if I could have them running local apps at the start of the year.
Anyone looking to implement local apps at this point (myself included) would be wise to remember that it is a very experimental proposition as it currently exists. That being said, there are a few people around who seem to have gotten not only firefox to work as a local app, but flash as well. If envy could be sent across the intertubes, you would detect an abundance of it emanating from me right now.
The good news is that I know that I've at least got the first step of firefox as a local app going thanks to Gavin and the guys on the edubuntu user list who really did a great job of dumbing down the Thin Client How to NAT so an amateur like me can follow it without frustration. In case you're thinking of trying local apps yourself you'll soon realize the first step is setting up the LTSP server as a NAT gateway so thin clients that don't boot off of the server (or local apps running off the thin client instead of the server) can get Internet access.
Regrettably, there's not a similarly concise and simple How To page for setting firefox as a local app, but I'm working on the process and if I get it nailed down I'll be sure to put some hours into a comprehensive How To for others to follow. Paying it forward and all that I suppose.
Finally, I sent a message to the xfce users listserv asking how to set up kiosk mode in xfce 4.6 but I haven't heard a response yet. I'm hoping it is just because it's the weekend, but the pessimist in me says it's time to move to KDE's well documented kiosk tool. I downloaded the latest Linux Mint image with KDE 4.3 as a means of reviving an old Gateway laptop my cousin sent my way a few months back. I'm planning on experimenting with the kiosk tool there and hoping it works as well as it claims. Great to be back! -joe
1 comment:
Just so you don't think it's only spammers reading your blog, I'd like to let you know that there's at least 1 human who looks forward to each and every one of your posts :)
Daniel
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