Lite Window Manager for a kiosk

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ShimmyT

Gawd
Joined
May 4, 2003
Messages
608
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.
 
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...

Code: 
exec /usr/bin/firefox -URL "blahblahblah" -fullscreen
 
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. 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.
 
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.
 
ShimmyT said:
... does anyone know how to remove the toolbar? I might have to look at that openbox as well.
Click to expand...

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

Code: 
session.screen0.toolbar.visible: false
 
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".
 
ameoba said:
You might need a WM unless you can disable FFox's ability to "open link in new window".
Click to expand...

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