Big update today. Lots of hard work and changes.
I’m pleased to release Webconverger localisations in:
If you would like to help out esp. with translations, check out the development guide. 
2.16 also debuts with live-initramfs that replaces casper. So expect even more (optional) features. I’ve also finally tweaked the Webconverger extension to allow CTRL+{T,W,L} keyboard shortcuts.
Also good news: Webconverger’s security features have been highlighted in a article about Web banking.
Thanks again to Daniel Baumann for his Debian-live help and other generous contributors to the project.
I think this ‘Web thing’ could be big.
My sister and her friend “interviewed” me about Webconverger. Can you tell we had no script or production skills for this video?
On a personal note, this week I am making the move to London, so I might be offline for a few days.
I received some Webconverger feedback today, saying this guy tried:
Though he found Webconverger “what he was looking for”. Relief. Though I was initially surprised at how much competition there is in this space! Sadly BoothCD and KioskCD seem very out of date. Thinstation seems to be targeting a different audience altogether and I haven’t given it a try.
There is also a review of Kiosk distributions that Webconverger unfortunately escaped from. There the winner was LiveKiosk aka EzWebPC, which features in the Webconverger comparison matrix.
I think EzWebPC has come from Morphix LiveKiosk, which came from Jure‘s work on LiveCD. Anyway I did mail Livekiosk/EzWebPC asking them for the source and they didn’t reply. Hence I started Webconverger. I knew I could make something better out of Debian Live and 2 months down the road… Webconverger is much better.
A highly requested feature for Webconverger is a hard drive install option and I was shocked to see another new kiosk project called Kiosk appliance (screen shot above) with such a feature. Oh damn! Though I did test “Kiosk appliance” out and though it seems to install to a hard drive via a RH thing… the distribution is very immature and it actually didn’t manage to connect to the internet for me. I think it might be because of the Tor stuff. I am not sure. Webconverger will have a much better hard drive install than that.
Today the 2.0.10 ”print support + bug fixes” download of Webconverger is out. See webconverger.org for the changelog, wiki and more.
- May update: cl33n is another Web operating system
So my sister is working at a school where the computers are in a shocking state.
All infected with viruses, spyware and malware. The machines either crawl along or are incredibly unstable. Some of them run some sort of virus protection program and I’ve seen one or two computers running two different anti-virus programs. On my travels I have seen countless infected Windows machines. It’s incredible!
And the worse thing about it, is that the Free Software geeks and outfits can’t seem to capitalise enough on it.
So what can I do? The Computer Scientist. Well, not a lot. For example all the Windows machines are in Korean. I can’t figure out how to change win32 language. Can you?
Plus, I don’t want to re-install Windows. I want to deploy some Linux based solution.
So what are the requirements? They need to :
* print timetables (via a crappy Epson inkjet) with something like Office
* be able to play macromedia based games
* use a browser
That’s it. It also can’t be more complex. No username or passwords please. We don’t want to have to train people to use a new system. Must be simple.
Oh diddums. Can Director macromedia kid games be played in Linux? I don’t think so. Oh I wish these kids’ software was on a N64 or something.
There is only like 10 PCs in this school and installing them with Linux would take quite a bit of my time. I need some sort of centralised control tower where I can control deployment of my own customized Ubuntu based distro.
I know very well about SkoleLinux but it is simply too complicated. No need for email. Outsource to Gmail and hosted service. Must be simple.
All I can think of will be complex and painful. Grrr…
Dependency on a Internet connection
Offline operation can be surprisingly usable (e.g. writing an email), but in most cases if you lose your network connection Web applications become useless. Network connections do tend to go down and if a Point of Sale (POS) Web system is offline then you can lose a ton of money.
Making Web applications distributed is very hard. Having a server on local client sites is asking for a whole world of pain. Making that local server update to a remote server with Debian is fairly easy, but that solves only part of the problem. Syncing databases and data. Nightmare.
Implications are that environments without good stable (and cheap) Internet connections (Islands, entire countries) can be (initially) poor areas to market a Web application solution.
Dependency on a Web browser (UA)
UAs usually require quite a good machine to run on. I forget what the minimum specs are for Firefox. For sane operation, you do need at least 800mhz and 256megs of RAM. There are quite a few PCs out there that don’t meet that specification. UAs also tend to require a mouse and hence more desk space compared to terminals.
There are loads of security problems associated with UAs nowadays. UAs are as complex as the operating systems beneath it. In fact, one could argue UAs are operating systems themselves.
In these cases I would suggest clients to switch their machines to LiveKiosk. Send clients new CDs for each major update.
Update: Webconverger is the best Linux Web kiosk out there.
If I could setup a “bounty” I would set it on:
I can’t even find the bug for this. SALT or the current default way it stores profile really really sucks.
If this authentication infomation etc. was stored in PAM or LDAP then I wouldn’t have to bother with XDM. A remote profile service would be even better.
A mass market “Kiosk Linux” could then have a chance work. An end user distribution where the desktop is just a browser. No Gnome, No KDE, No bullshit. Just a browser. That’s the desktop.
Web applications could be made to assist people in say, burning CDs. Playing music from Firefox would be trickier.