[dot] Waldo Bastian on Kiosk and the Linux desktop

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1092253495/

From: aKademy Team <akademy-team at kde.org>
Dept: locking-your-desktops-since-3.0
Date: Wednesday 11/Aug/2004, @21:44

Waldo Bastian on Kiosk and the Linux desktop
============================================

   For the third interview in our series previewing aKademy we
approached Waldo Bastian, whose most recent major project has been the
Kiosk framework. Tom Chance and Fabrice Mous talked to him about Kiosk,
the new Kiosk Admin Tool, Linux on the corporate desktop and what we can
expect from his talk
[http://conference2004.kde.org/cfp-userconf/waldo.bastian-kde.kiosk.mode.php]
at aKademy [http://conference2004.kde.org/]. Don't miss the previous
interviews with Matthias Ettrich [http://dot.kde.org/1091963184/] and
Nils Magnus [http://dot.kde.org/1091772577/].

     Q: First of all can you explain who you are and what is your role
in the KDE-project?

     Waldo Bastian: My name is Waldo Bastian, I started working on KDE
in 1998, since 1999 I work on KDE for SUSE LINUX. My main focus is to
provide the underlying non-GUI technology for KDE applications, examples
of that are the IO-slave handling, command line parsing, handling of
temporary files, configuration files, the internal generation of the KDE
menu and DCOP (inter-process communication).

     Q: What is Kiosk?

     WB: KDE has many powerful features and possibilities. However,
there are situations where it is desirable to reduce the number of
features and  possibilities. In a work situation for example you may
want to provide workers with a desktop environment that is streamlined
for the tasks that need to be done. Excess functionality can be
distracting in such case. KDE's Kiosk framework makes it possible for a
system administrator to turn off certain KDE features.

     Q: What's the focus of this project and how did it start?

     WB: The focus was originally on public terminals (hence the name
Kiosk) and Internet cafes but it became soon clear that similar
functionality would also be very valuable in other environments such as
schools or enterprise use.

     Q: Are you paid to work on Kiosk?
     WB: I am full-time employed by SUSE LINUX and the graphical
management tool, the Kiosk Admin Tool, has been specifically written for
Novell's upcoming Novell Linux Desktop.

     Q: When was Kiosk first integrated into the KDE framework?

     WB: The first version of the Kiosk framework was introduced in KDE
3.0. Since then it has been improved and fine tuned. The result is a
quite mature Kiosk framework in KDE 3.2 that has been successfully used
in several large deployments. Recently I also started with a graphical
management tool, the Kiosk Admin Tool, which should make it easier to
take advantage of the Kiosk features.

     Q: Can you tell us more about the Kiosk Admin Tool? Will it be
integrated into KDE's release schedule, and moved out of kdeextragear?

     WB: The Kiosk Admin Tool is a graphical tool for managing KDE's
Kiosk framework. It allows you to create default profiles for groups of
users and provide each of these groups with a tuned default desktop. The
Kiosk Admin Tool is released independently from the major KDE releases
which allows me to incorporate feedback faster, and I have no plans to
move it out of kdeextragear. I expect that most Linux distributions will
include the Kiosk Admin Tool together with KDE. Ask your distributor for
it if you can't find it in your favorite distribution.

     Q: Is there more information for system administrators who would
like to use the Kiosk-framework?

     WB: Every KDE system administrator should have a bookmark to KDE
for System Administrators [http://www.kde.org/areas/sysadmin/] pages.
People interested in the Kiosk Admin Tool will want to keep an eye on
its homepage [http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kiosktool.php]. To be
informed about the latest releases and to get answers to your questions
or help with problems there is the kde-kiosk mailinglist
[http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-kiosk].  Response times may
vary though, especially during KDE releases.

     Q: It seems that a lot of distributions are offering enterprise
solutions. Is Kiosk part of some of those solutions?

     WB: Kiosk and the Kiosk Admin Tool will be part of Novell's
upcoming Novell Linux Desktop.

     Q: Do you have examples of organizations using KDE as the Kiosk
framework?

     WB: I do not keep track but there are quite a few internet cafe's
using KDE and Kiosk. See
http://enterprise.kde.org/interviews/publicinternet/
[http://enterprise.kde.org/interviews/publicinternet/] for example. It's
also quite popular with schools. The kde-kiosk mailinglist has more than
200 subscribers and I suspect that many of them are take advantage of
KDE and its Kiosk features within their organization.

     Q: What does the project need the most now?

     WB: Feedback. I want to hear from you if you use KDE's Kiosk
features. I want to hear it when you are happy with them and I want to
hear it when you have problems with it.

     Q: Do you think there is a place for KDE Desktop Enterprise as
companies using Microsoft Windows desktops are overwhelmingly dominant.
Why should a company opt for a Linux desktop?

     WB: There are of course cost saving aspects but I think the most
important reason for companies to go with KDE is that it puts the
company back in control over their corporate desktops. With KDE your IT
department gets new opportunities to help make your desktop workers more
productive instead of spending all day fighting to prevent things from
falling apart.

     Q: You are one of the speakers on aKademy. What's your talk about?
Who should be attending your talk?

     WB: Both my tutorial and my talk are aimed at system administrators
that want to deploy KDE and that want to take full advantage of the
features that KDE has to offer to system administrators.