Web Terminal / Browser-Only OS -- Is this Possible?

[Varian]

I've searched and searched, both the web and here and have just a basic question:

Is there a distro out there that, once installed, is basically nothing more than a web browser? I'm talking 100% streamlined for browsing. You boot it up and you're in a browser -- nothing else, no apps, not utilities, nada.

Sort of like a kiosk mode.

If not, how difficult is it to do this with an existing distro like damn small or knoppix? Keeping in mind I'm an Ubuntu guy and a complete newbie (never compiled my own kernel)

[Freston]

Not to sound blunt, but why?


I'd say LFS can be made into what you want, but I doubt if you'd go through the trouble of building a LFS system... It would/could/should be fun though

All distro's can be stripped down, but you'll need X... and a WM. Or do you think Lynx is good enough? It'll be difficult to strip a distro out of each and every last little app, and then there are a lot of commands you wont need.

--

I can see only two reasons for such a setup. Either you want to dedicate severely limited hardware to the purpose ( ), or you want the safest and/or fastest browser known to man.

For the first, a distro such as DSL is good enough I guess. If it works, it works. You can strip down DSL for a bit, but surely the time that takes may not be worth the disk space it frees. (Also note that any hardware before 486 needs some special attention to work.) And for the second, browse from a lifeCD for safety, or an 'advanced' distro such as Gentoo, Debian, Slackware (maybe Arch? -note to self: look into Arch-) and build it towards speed (and/or safety)

PS: Welcome to the forum

[devils casper]

You can install Debian through netinstall. It will install minimalist system. You have to install X server ( xorg ) and a Web Browser.
Create a launch script :

#!/bin/bash
rm ~/.xinitrc
echo exec $1 > ~/.xinitrc
startx

Let say, Script name is Launch and you have installed Firefox Web Browser. Save Launch in /usr/bin folder and execute it to launch Web Browser.

Launch firefox

[Varian]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Freston -- "Why" is a perfectly legitimate question -- a friend of mine owns a coffee & bakery shop and wants to set up high speed internet / web access on a couple terminals, but has heard horror stories about people bypassing kiosk mode in windows and wreaking havoc. Plus, you're right -- it will be on limited hardware, but not exactly a 1992 Packard Bell either. And speed would be a necessity.

I'll look further into LFS -- I'm starting to enjoy the tinkering.

devils -- thank you for suggesting Debian, any particular version I should look at? I read 4.0 would be best for limited hardware: 900MHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB, ATI Mobility (forget the number).

My other concern is WiFi -- which will be the primary connection -- I've read some pretty frustrating remarks about linux and wifi. I know it depends on the hardware and driver availability, but has it gotten better as a whole? Ubuntu has made leaps and bounds but I don't think that's a proper indicator.

Any way to modify the OS so Firefox is the ONLY application running, and automatically starts upon boot?

[devils casper]

Debian 4 is perfect and it will work fine on those specs. You are right about Linux/WiFi compatibility. There are a very few distros that support WiFi out of box. You might face WiFi problem in Debian.

Check if Ubuntu LiveCD ( go for latest v 7.04, Feisty ) detects and configure your WiFi . If it does, install Ubuntu and disable X Server. You will have command line system like Debian.

[oz]

Is there a distro out there that, once installed, is basically nothing more than a web browser? I'm talking 100% streamlined for browsing. You boot it up and you're in a browser -- nothing else, no apps, not utilities, nada.

I'm not personally aware of any web browsers that will work without an underlying OS, but there might be one. That said, even if you install only the base system of an OS, then install a browser on top of it, it will certainly be more than just a web browser because there will be various utilities and apps that come with the base system.

[bidi]

Like always I'm late to the conversation!

I've used BlueFlops in the past and like it quite a bit. It's just a kernel with a SVGAlib version of the links browser. It doesn't render pages as nicely as Firefox or Opera, but it does it's job fairly well.

[valan]

There's actually very few things needed in this case. The minimal install would include the kernel and nessecary modules and boot/init/login utilities, whatever is needed for internet/network connectivity, X, Firefox, and a few libraries needed for those. You don't even need a window manager. Of course, if you go with a non X browser then all the X type stuff you don't need anymore. Once those things are installed, all the other tools that are on there can be removed (though you should verify you don't need them before doing so). I don't know if there's a distro set up for this already, but it wouldn't be hard, might be fun to do with LFS, and it wouldn't surprise me if there's 3 or 4 already for this purpose.

[fingal]

I've read that Sabayon Linux has an Internet Kiosk mode which requires few system resources. Some information is available on their Wiki.

[goosifer]

I'm googling for the same thing that the OP was looking for. I came across LiveKiosk (TM). (and no, I am not affiated with this website.) What I really want is something like this but that can handle wireless internet. That would be a great bedtime reading laptop. Onward with my search.