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Unidata / cloudstream

Docker-based framework for Application Streaming
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support for running just one application in full screen mode(kiosk mode) #5

Open hodiapa opened 8 years ago

hodiapa commented 8 years ago

Currently one can access all the workspace and the Desktop GUI, would be nice to have just one GUI application to be running in the KIOSK or a full screen mode.

hodiapa commented 8 years ago

Forgot to mention, amazing project work

WardF commented 8 years ago

Thanks for the kind words; I was starting to think that I was perhaps the only one who was interested in this project :).

Kiosk mode would be great; the confounding factor is that the current light-weight windows manager I'm using (fluxbox) doesn't provide a 'universal' kiosk mode. You can still achieve this, if your GUI program supports it, via the optional start.sh file. This might look something like this:

#start.sh
#!/bin/bash

/path/to/my/program --kiosk-mode

If your intended program doesn't support a kiosk-mode natively, there are tools out there like wmctrl that allow you to issue commands to windows in an X environment. I haven't adapted it to any of my projects, yet, and it would make the start.sh file a little more complicated, but it would be doable. Once I've gotten it sorted out, I imagine I will add a tutorial/example for using it.

If you use a start.sh file, incidentally, remember you don't need to do anything special to make it run. The bootstrap.sh script that manages the VNC/etc stack will also execute start.sh, if one is found.

Thanks again for the kind words!

hodiapa commented 8 years ago

I am working on creating an eclipse environment, so without given users access to whole system utilized/window manager, would like to just expose the IDE...

These are two links which are closest approach for enabling kiosk mode without application's fullscreen mode support.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/kioskFluxbox

http://blogs.wcode.org/2013/09/howto-boot-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-fullscreen-browser-kiosk/

WardF commented 8 years ago

That is tricky; this project spawned from the https://github.com/Unidata/cloudidv project. I wasn't able to find a satisfactory solution at the time and ultimately decided "These are scientists, and they're in a sandboxed environment, this is the risk I'll take". I see how your situation is different.

I recently discovered an extremely light-weight Windows Manager that seems like it could fit the bill for a kiosk mode. It is called Ratpoison, available here. I played with it briefly before I had to shift gears. Screenshots here and here. It seems like this WM, configured judiciously to enable/disable various key combinations for switching programs, would work well. I just haven't had time to pursue this, yet. If you do, please feel free to share :).

For that matter, I don't use eclipse very often, but if you had a way to start it maximized, and then could disable alt-tab for window switching, you might be halfway there.

I suppose I'll need to sort out how to lock down a fluxbox environment and then provide a tutorial. CloudStream is a natural fit for kiosk-mode applications.

hodiapa commented 8 years ago

Specifically its for the omnet++ a network simulator IDE. Thanks for suggesting the lightweight DE

WardF commented 8 years ago

This is a good conversation but I doubt I'll have an out-of-the-box solution in short order. I've created an issue, https://github.com/Unidata/cloudstream/issues/6 to track progress on actually implementing universal kiosk mode, with a link to a guide I found that might prove useful.