Creating Firefox Kiosks with GNU/Linux

Audience: All
Technical Level: Pretty Geeky

Since our OPACs are essentially glorified web browsers, expensive, overpowered Windows machines could be replaced with a more secure, much less maintenance-intensive, and cost-effective (read: free) solution, making use of already available hardware. I will demonstrate how I built Web-browsing kiosks for our library OPAC machines using Firefox and GNU/Linux. The kiosk project is Live-CD based, and I will demo the kiosk as part of the presentation.

The presentation will cover the following issues:

  • Remastering the CD
  • Installing packages
  • Securing the system
  • Tweaking and Locking down Firefox
  • Windows machines not completely gone! (just mostly)
  • Current status of the project

slides: http://calicon06.classcaster.org/blog/resource/firefox_kiosk_slides/cali.tar.gz

MP3: HurleyLR3Th1030.mp3

>

Play It Now!

Michael Hurley
Webmaster/System Administrator
University of Connecticut Law School

About Elmer Masters

Elmer R. Masters is the Director of Technology at the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (www.cali.org) where he works on interesting projects involving technology and legal education like eLangdell, Classcaster, Lawbooks, QuizWright, and the CALI website. He has over 30 years of experience building tech tools for legal education and systems for accessing law and legal materials on the Internet. He is the admin of the Teknoids mailing list (www.teknoids.net) and has been blogging about legal education, law, and technology for over 20 years (www.symphora.com). He has a JD from Syracuse University College of Law and was employed by Syracuse, Cornell Law School, and Emory University School of Law before joining CALI in 2003. Elmer has presented at the CALI Conference for Law School Computing (where he organizes the program), the AALL and AALS Annual Meetings, Law Via The Internet, and other conferences, symposia, and workshops on topics ranging from IT management in law schools to building open access court reporting systems to information architecture design and implementation in law.
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