Lite Window Manager for a kiosk

[ShimmyT]

I am building a test kiosk system for work using Gentoo on an old Compaq EP 6300. It will be a very basic box used for web browsing with Firefox. I already have a Firefox plugin to make it go full screen with minimal settings. Users will not access these computers, it's only used for showing a website that autorefreshes every 15 mins or so. Any suggestions for a lite window manager? Or should I forego the window manager all together and just use basic X?

Oh and for the gentoo / script writers I'm try to write an rc script for Gentoo to start up my firefox. I know this is the command I want to run:

/usr/bin/firefox -URL "blahblahblah" -fullscreen

but after going through the Gentoo documentation my rc script is terribly messed up when I know it should be fairly easy. Basically all I want it to do is start Firefox, be able to kill all of the Firefox processes, and then restart it.

[Gertrude]

What WM you use is totally personal preference. If all it does is run a browser I would just use something like fluxbox or icewm.

To start Firefox as soon as you log into X just edit '/home/username/.xinitrc', and put in...


exec /usr/bin/firefox -URL "blahblahblah" -fullscreen

[BillLeeLee]

Well, I'm not that experienced writing rc scripts, but for some window managers, you could run Tdm (the X basic, really ugly WM), but I'd recommend Openbox (http://icculus.org/openbox/). It's very light on resource usage (doesn't have a toolbar, nor even it's own background tool) and it's very fast. I've used it as my main WM after switching over from Fluxbox.

[portlandoregongamer]

fluxbox :)

[Silent1]

another vote for fluxbox, great wm.

[ShimmyT]

I really like Fluxbox as well. I'm thinking I might use it since we've gotten a few votes from it from you guys. Before I start tearing into the init for it tonight, off of the top of everyones head does anyone know how to remove the toolbar? I might have to look at that openbox as well.

[BillLeeLee]

... does anyone know how to remove the toolbar? I might have to look at that openbox as well.

To remove the fluxbox toolbar, set this in ~/.fluxbox/init:

session.screen0.toolbar.visible: false

[ameoba]

I think the best thing to do would be to not use a window manager. Have the session tied to Firefox & have {XGK}DM autologin to a restricted account that starts FFox fullscreen.

What's the point in giving them a window-manager if they're only running one app?



edit : You might need a WM unless you can disable FFox's ability to "open link in new window".

[BillLeeLee]

You might need a WM unless you can disable FFox's ability to "open link in new window".

You can basically do that with Tabbrowser extensions and restricting everything to the same window.