Create an Indestructible Shared PC

[mouser]

Create an Indestructible Shared PC

"Need to put a PC in a public place? A free Microsoft tool makes it easy to lock down."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1892666,00.asp


[linked from OS News]

[f0dder]

Sounds pretty interesting...

[Edvard]

My local library has been doing something similar to this for years. Somehow, these are security locked to run ONLY the library's internet and book catalog software, though you could download and install temporary things like flash and java plugins which are all gone the next time someone logs in. I always wondered how they did that on W98 machines...
Another library in town has thin-clients hosted on some 'other' os, I think QNX, based on the look of the browser.

[on-disk]

One cool thing FreeBSD (and I'm sure other BSD/UNIX/Linux) have been able to do for a really long time is re-install the OS without loosing any of the goodies. 

To type out how it all works would take a month and would probably be a dull read... but the gist is that because the core of the OS operates independently from many of the components, you can swap out and re-install the OS without loosing everything.  Not like on Windows where re-installing the OS is like going back to zero.

[f0dder]

on-disk, you can't always do that painlessly - "make world" can leave you with a preeeetty broken system

[on-disk]

Well it would always depend on where your machine is 'broken' as to how easy it is to fix it.  But if you're looking to build a system for limited functions anyway, you may as well go FOSS and save some cash on the OS.  If all you're looking to do is make an access point terminal, most people wouldn't care if their browser isn't IE if all they are doing is clicking around in the first place - ya know?

[Josh]

My local library has been doing something similar to this for years. Somehow, these are security locked to run ONLY the library's internet and book catalog software, though you could download and install temporary things like flash and java plugins which are all gone the next time someone logs in. I always wondered how they did that on W98 machines...
Another library in town has thin-clients hosted on some 'other' os, I think QNX, based on the look of the browser.

That would be called Mandatory profiles where, no matter what changes you make to a user profile, the profile is restored to a default state at relogin. A nice feature that has existed since nt4 days

[Carol Haynes]

DeepFreeze can be used to ensure the system always reboots to exactly the same state. You can unfreeze some disc space so that users can save personal data if you want.

See http://www.faronics.com/index.asp