A challenge. Linux OS to run either Organteq or Pianoteq Only

lewisalexander2020 wrote:

Hi guys.

OK, a challenge for you here...

Is there a way of a linux distro as light as anything, which can run an instance of either organteq or pianoteq, to boot straight to it from power up, then safe shut down, without allowing someone access to the rest of the OS and UI?

can this be done?

lew

Hi Lew,

This is a fairly standard IT procedure for government departments, utilities or large commercial organisations, whereby they provide a public-facing computer that only has access into a single fullscreen application. The computer will boot automatically into the application and when the application is shutdown the computer shuts-down as well. It is usually provided in a public area so that members of the public can access data on the organisations database via queries lodged in the organisations application.

This publicly accessible computer is said to be in Kiosk Mode.

Here is a brief article that explains how you would set up a lightweight Linux interface into a particular application; in this case Chromium

https://willhaley.com/blog/debian-fullscreen-gui-kiosk/

In your particular case you would want Organteq or Pianoteq to automatically start, when you turned on the computer, so the autostart script for the kiosk-user would need to be altered along the lines of

Organteq
                  --fullscreen       : start in fullscreen mode
                  --fxp FILENAME     : load an FXP file on startup
 or               --preset NAME      : load a preset on startup
                   --quiet &

If you run "Organteq --help" on the command line you will see a list of the variables/values that can be loaded in the autostart script as a part of the Organtec application.

Obviously. how you this will depend on the flavour of Linux that you are running and the particular Window Manager that you are utilising, but as a starting point you can do some research on how to set up Kiosk Mode on your computer.

You will need to do some initial work with the kiosk-user login to ensure that they have access to the relevant FXP files and any presets that you have modified, and also to tighten up security on the computer, so that the kiosk-user cant muck around too much, but this is standard systems administration and should be done on any computer that you are placing in the public environment. Kiosk Mode is a particularly powerful tool so you should be able to set up your computer as you require it.

I hope that this has been of some use to you and that you have fun fiddling under the bonnet of your kiosk.

Michael