Porteus

Love Slax and it's modules system so much, but old drivers and abandoned at all. Then found branch of Slax - Porteus and was happy so much.
Kiosk with Slax and Fluxbox was easy - disabled panel, remapped keys (right mouse menu was inactive), used idesk for icons and booted with predefined wallpaper. But with LXDE and Porteus I see apps that are need to be deleted (firefox/transmission/pidgin) - what way is the best? How can I configure window manager to suite kiosk needs? Maybe there is tiny small distribution with only window manager/drivers/wireless and lan network manager?
If someone can help me to reduce size of LXDE version to 150mb or less I will appreciate it

Sorry for my english

@Slaxlover
Welcome on board!
If you take a regular Porteus and in /base you delete all modules but 000-kernel, 001-core, 002-xorg and 003-lxde you will have a very fast basic system under 150 MB. 8)

There is also a tool called kiosktool (abandoned i think) which still works OK for locking down the desktop. I havn't tested it with the latest v1.2 but it can be found on the 32bit repo.

What a fast reply, thank you guys!
Ok, I remove all modules and then panel with icons of opened apps need to be always hidden. But network management utility is what I want to stay with access by clicking desktop icon.
Will look at kiosk utility mentioned above, but maybe you can help me with a hint - which conf. files need to be configured? As I wrote before, wanted only network gui utility/icons without system panel/no right click menus/changed keyboard shortcuts to access terminal and so on. Kiosktool is likely damaged according to boot log (332kb).
I think the best way is to stay with only fluxbox without XFCE (but will network utility with gui work in fluxbox?). I mean delete XFCE module at all and replace with fluxbox (it is easier configured for kiosk usage). Will it make harm to original Proteus if I simply delete xfce and write fluxbox instead?
And thank you all who support this branch

slaxlover wrote:What a fast reply, thank you guys!
...
I think the best way is to stay with only fluxbox without XFCE (but will network utility with gui work in fluxbox?). I mean delete XFCE module at all and replace with fluxbox (it is easier configured for kiosk usage). Will it make harm to original Proteus if I simply delete xfce and write fluxbox instead?
And thank you all who support this branch

You may delete one desktop, but if I am mistaken [please correct me]. Fluxbox is not available as a desktop on porteus. It has openbox, lxde, kde and/or xfce. Unless* there is a ready to go module for it somewhere? What wread suggests in my opinion is correct with lxde you have a nice looking desktop under 150MB ready to go, except the kiosk modules. Hope this helps in some way. Good luck with your goal and hope you can accomplish it with porteus

Weird situation with save.dat. I create it, modify boot settings and nothing happens. Always fresh boot. I guess only ext2 will help me?
Next question is how to lock settings to avoid users modify them. And the last - how can I disable right click?
Thanks for your answer in advance

Weird situation with save.dat. I create it, modify boot settings and nothing happens. Always fresh boot.

Nothing strange there if i understand correctly. You are booting into fresh mode so no changes are activated. This is the function of 'always fresh'. If you boot to a DM (kde for example) you should edit the line in porteus.cfg that relates to the kde and add changes=/path/to/save.dat

Alternatively you can hit TAB when you select your boot mode and add the cheatcode there.

Regarding kiosk mode ... fanthom just made an awesome module that turns your porteus install into a kiosk. Just drop it into the modules folder and reboot and you have yourself a kiosk! Not sure if he will release it for mainstream yet so i'll leave it to him to decide. I love it because there's no need too dick around with config files to disable stuff and harden the system up.

Tonio is correct, fluxbox is not included in any of the ISO's. Openbox is included in the Standard Editions -- it acts as a window manager for LXDE, so it is included as a part of the LXDE module (and it can run on its own if you start it from text mode). There is a fluxbox module in the 64-bit repo, so you could remove the devel module (no one needs to compile anything in your kiosk, I imagine), 0090-xfce.xzm and 0091-xfce-apps.xzm (I'm assuming you're still working from the XFCE iso), and then add the fluxbox module. I've not tested it myself, but if it has an .xinitrc file included and symlinked properly, you will get to a GUI via 'startx'. You will need to do some configuring to the startup scripts if you want to start fluxbox through a login manager (lxdm is included in 002-xorg.xzm), just let us know and we can help you there.

brokenman wrote:

Weird situation with save.dat. I create it, modify boot settings and nothing happens. Always fresh boot.

Nothing strange there if i understand correctly. You are booting into fresh mode so no changes are activated. This is the function of 'always fresh'. If you boot to a DM (kde for example) you should edit the line in porteus.cfg that relates to the kde and add changes=/path/to/save.dat

Alternatively you can hit TAB when you select your boot mode and add the cheatcode there.

Regarding kiosk mode ... fanthom just made an awesome module that turns your porteus install into a kiosk. Just drop it into the modules folder and reboot and you have yourself a kiosk! Not sure if he will release it for mainstream yet so i'll leave it to him to decide. I love it because there's no need too dick around with config files to disable stuff and harden the system up.

Edited line with DM to be changes=/path/to/save.dat (first created save.dat wih porteus utility, then edited porteus.cfg). No changes. What should I do to make it work?
Will be glad to see kiosk module fully working If fanthom let me use it of course.

Posted after 1 minute 57 seconds:

Ahau wrote:Tonio is correct, fluxbox is not included in any of the ISO's. Openbox is included in the Standard Editions -- it acts as a window manager for LXDE, so it is included as a part of the LXDE module (and it can run on its own if you start it from text mode). There is a fluxbox module in the 64-bit repo, so you could remove the devel module (no one needs to compile anything in your kiosk, I imagine), 0090-xfce.xzm and 0091-xfce-apps.xzm (I'm assuming you're still working from the XFCE iso), and then add the fluxbox module. I've not tested it myself, but if it has an .xinitrc file included and symlinked properly, you will get to a GUI via 'startx'. You will need to do some configuring to the startup scripts if you want to start fluxbox through a login manager (lxdm is included in 002-xorg.xzm), just let us know and we can help you there.

Fluxbox is ~800kb in repo, it is not full and seems to be broken.

@slaxlover

a) please run following command: then use the output with 'changes=' cheat.

please also have a look here:
link

b) brokenman found a bug in my patch (he could get to the console from firefox quite easily) so it needs some tweaks.
we are thinking about releasing specialized 'porteus-kiosk' edition but still not sure when it would be and on which conditions. could be even paid one like 5$ for the ISO or totally for free like standard porteus editions.
still not sure how much of the effort we would need to put into it.

stay tuned if you are interested.

I'm pretty sure everyone will be against me
I would suggest to leave it with 5$ for symbolic price and this is a way to support Porteus.

fanthom wrote:@slaxlover

a) please run following command:

Code: Select all

realpath /mnt/sdXY/path_to_save.dat

then use the output with 'changes=' cheat.

please also have a look here:
link

b) brokenman found a bug in my patch (he could get to the console from firefox quite easily) so it needs some tweaks.
we are thinking about releasing specialized 'porteus-kiosk' edition but still not sure when it would be and on which conditions. could be even paid one like 5$ for the ISO or totally for free like standard porteus editions.
still not sure how much of the effort we would need to put into it.

stay tuned if you are interested.

Thanks, will try this
I'm against firefox (laggy and growing databases), so this is not critical for me.
I think donations will be better than free at all and even for a fixed price (open source things). As for me, I'll donate even 100 bucks because need this for commercial purposes (service terminal). But fixed price is not open source way imho.
Thanks for your support and Porteus project! Please let me know if you decide to test your kiosk-build

@slaxlover
please send an email to brokenman@porteus.org and he will give you a pre-release ISO for testing.
feedback should go also there rather than on the forum as alpha is not even released yet.

I think donations will be better than free at all and even for a fixed price (open source things)

agree but as i said we haven't decide about anything yet in that matter.

I uploaded a test preview and sent some emails regarding this.

Further development of flash for linux has been abandoned. After 5 years it will be dead. By then i expect HTML5 to dominate. Moonlight addon (for silverlight content) has also been abandoned.

For now i think we need to stay with the flash plugin (it is still dominant on the web) but would people prefer the google-chrome browser (or alternative) over firefox for the kiosk?

brokenman wrote:I uploaded a test preview and sent some emails regarding this.

Further development of flash for linux has been abandoned. After 5 years it will be dead. By then i expect HTML5 to dominate. Moonlight addon (for silverlight content) has also been abandoned.

For now i think we need to stay with the flash plugin (it is still dominant on the web) but would people prefer the google-chrome browser (or alternative) over firefox for the kiosk?

Opera has built-in kiosk tools that suits best I think, but webkit browsers render css3 better So, maybe give a try to Opera?