Hi there. I'm blowing my own trumpet a bit here, but I thought some of you might be interested nonetheless.
On the IRC channel, Ralph mentioned that a chap who worked at Bournemouth Uni used to let people try out distros in their computer lab. This inspired me to wonder how easy it would be to make a "virtual lab" where nearly any member of the public could test drive an assortment of operating systems, needing nothing more than a VNC client. The theory is to use the KVM virtualizer, which has a built-in VNC server, to present users of the "virtual lab" with a machine that's just got past POST. I'm taking this approach rather than just using Xvnc to start an X session so that the user can interact with the console, with grub, and safely have access to root. After a couple of hours, I have a working prototype. You can only choose from one operating system -- Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop -- but it meets the requirement of being easy to use; you can just VNC in and there it is. http://parenthephobia.org.uk/2009/06/05/creating-a-virtual-kiosk-with-kvm/ Until the system is much more mature, it's not so much a lab as a kiosk; hence the title of that particular article. The article includes the tiny amount of code you'd need to implement this on any KVM-capable boxes you have laying around, if doing that interests you. What do you think? Does it actually work for you? Could something like this be useful, whether for FOSS advocacy or for other purposes? Do you know of existing work in this area? -- Nathan Baum <[email protected]> -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, 2009-06-03 20:00 Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
