Has anyone used these - touch screens? And how exactly do they work - I mean, stuff like clicking on a link or a button in a program? And are there generally linux drivers available, and do you need specific drivers or do they look like mice?
My charity is thinking of a LAN based web site, internal only, accessed by touch screens so we don't have to have a keyboard out to get dirty and for mischevious hands to play with.... All you could do is click on what there is. Well, its a hope. We'd use browser Linux booted off an internal flash card, read only. Might be safe. But that part I can manage, its some experience with touch screens that would be appreciated.
Peter
Peter Alcibiades wrote:
Has anyone used these - touch screens? And how exactly do they work - I mean, stuff like clicking on a link or a button in a program? And are there generally linux drivers available, and do you need specific drivers or do they look like mice?
The ones I've seen just look like mice, typically these days via a USB interface, so I would expect them to work on Linux but have never tried.
My charity is thinking of a LAN based web site, internal only, accessed by touch screens so we don't have to have a keyboard out to get dirty and for mischevious hands to play with.... All you could do is click on what there is. Well, its a hope. We'd use browser Linux booted off an internal flash card, read only. Might be safe. But that part I can manage, its some experience with touch screens that would be appreciated.
Sounds like an interesting project and it's something I've wanted to do for a couple of clients, I've just never found a kiosk browser package that's done what I wanted. So please let me/the list know how you get on.
Some of our suppliers sell touchscreens, I'll drop them an email about O/S support.
Mark Rogers wrote:
Some of our suppliers sell touchscreens, I'll drop them an email about O/S support.
Looking at the models I can get, and googling the model numbers, I found this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-686506.html
Looks possible but not painless, but this was over 18 months ago so things might have improved.
Mark Rogers wrote:
Sounds like an interesting project and it's something I've wanted to do for a couple of clients, I've just never found a kiosk browser package that's done what I wanted. So please let me/the list know how you get on.
I managed it once with a firefox plugin called Rkiosk, which got me 90% of where I wanted to be. However this was for a kiosk in a private waiting area so not for general public abuse, you still need some script cleverness to make sure that firefox restarts if it crashes etc.
I seem to recall it didn't do anything about deleting history etc which you might need to look at. In my case the kiosk was limited to browsing some intranet sites so I wasn't really concerned about this.
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
I managed it once with a firefox plugin called Rkiosk, which got me 90% of where I wanted to be. However this was for a kiosk in a private waiting area so not for general public abuse, you still need some script cleverness to make sure that firefox restarts if it crashes etc.
I seem to recall it didn't do anything about deleting history etc which you might need to look at. In my case the kiosk was limited to browsing some intranet sites so I wasn't really concerned about this.
Hi, Dunno if this is helpful, but the Opera web browser can be started in Kiosk mode with a command-line switch and requires no add-ons or plugins to do it. Relevant info here: http://www.opera.com/support/mastering/kiosk/
It works under Linux. It's free to use but not open source.
Hope that helps. Steve
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Mark Rogers -
Peter Alcibiades -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk -
Wayne Stallwood