[KLUG Members] Kiosk / Lightweight Workstation Recommendations

[Todd Pillars]

Hi all,

I have been kicking around two kiosk scenarios and would like some 
outside perspective. I am trying to decide between a customized live CD 
or a locked-down desktop environment installed to hard drive.

Two PIII/933 machines each with monitors, and one network printer. Each 
should have Firefox, OpenOffice.org, network printing, write to CD-R/USB 
drive only. The intended purpose is a workstation that people (generally 
from small organizations/businesses) can sit in front of and use for 
"Business" type research - without a Linux person holding their hand. 
After using the system they will get both a live CD and (maybe) an 
install CD.

The project does have two constraints: It has to be Gnome, and it has to 
be on Ubuntu. Debian will do for obvious reasons. This is not to start a 
flame war but donning my fire retardant suit anyway.

The custom CD makes sense from the oops factor. If you make a mistake or 
an error is encountered, just reboot. Negatives, it is slow and very 
rigid. Plus, all changes require a rebuild, reburn, etc. The 
customization process is not the easiest, and there is no one set way to 
create it, although it _can_ be somewhat automated.

The locked-down desktop makes sense from a flexibility standpoint, but 
the trade-off of speed is negated by the use of a hard drive that could 
be a point of failure. And even after removing launchers from the 
panel(s) who knows if you "really" have everything locked down? Another 
big challenge here is blowing away the user directory after logout and 
recreating a clean user directory with the bare minimum dot config files 
et al.

I have also thought of LTSP/Thin Client but it should/must go through 
NoCat (or another auth/accounting scheme) which generally blows up 
networking on LTSP right nicely.

Ideas? Input? Thanks in advance!

Todd