Looks great, I completed a similar project a little over a year ago that
has been working out very well, much better than the XP install that was
replaced.

I started at the same libraryhacker post as you but ended up putting
together a solution using stock debian with the opera web browser in kiosk
mode and some additional firewall configuration to whitelist just our opac
domain.  I used clonezilla to deploy across all our opacs.

We haven't gathered any formal data from users but there hasn't been any
complaints.  I suspect most wouldn't notice any differences since the end
product is a full screen browser, no buttons, etc.

I wrote up a blog post detailing the original process
http://www.textlibris.info/archives/47

It's great to hear about these projects


David Cirella



On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Erik Mitchell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi Joshua -
>
> Interesting work!  I took on a tangential project to implement thin-client
> opacs using linux/gnome sessions a few years ago with pretty good success
> so it is nice to see some new work here.
>
> Other than an internal report that says that the project was mostly
> successful I do not have much that came out of that work but it was
> interesting to see that the opac users (largely undergraduate students) had
> no issues with simple tasks (web-browsing, document printing) and readily
> adapted to the linux/gnome environment.  I had less success with some
> linux-based thin clients in more robust word-processing environments though
> (seemed to be an issue with lack of open office familiarity).  We actually
> tried to conduct a user-satisfaction/perception study but found that our
> students did not even recognize that the environment was different as and
> such had no positive or negative opinions about the platform.  Have you
> gathered any data from users that would show how people react to these
> types of platforms?
>
> Erik
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Joshua Cowles <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Hi Code4Lib,
> >
> > First post here but I've been following the mailing list for a while and
> > the Journal and planet.code4lib longer.  I just posted a write-up
> (updating
> > one previously posted to libraryhacker.org) about using WebConverger to
> > create OPAC kiosks.  I'm hoping to 1) share it with anyone who might find
> > it useful and 2) hear feedback from others who are interested in Linux
> OPAC
> > kiosk solutions.  I suspect that some of the people/projects I reference
> > may be on this list as well, so feel free to chime in.  There is a disqus
> > comment area beneath the write-up:
> >
> >
> >
> http://blog.jcowles.com/post/36823752885/opac-kiosk-stations-dumping-windows-for-linux
> >
> > Thanks & I hope to attend the Code4Lib conference for the first time this
> > year, so I hope to meet some of you in person soon.
> >
> > --
> > Josh Cowles
> > Fond du Lac Public Library
> >
>