Health IT
Low-cost, diskless computer prototype
A friend of mine who has been working with Maseno Mission (http://www.masenomissions.org/) in Kenya asked me to assist them with their effort to create a Cyber Cafe. Their hope is that it will bring in some funds for the mission and help satisfy local demand and curiosity about the Internet.
I prototyped a solution that you can see here: http://www.xcentric-systems.com/maseno . It is based on Ubuntu Linux and was designed to exist in a public, multi-user environment where it is prone to virus attacks.
The mission is not using the solution yet. The local computer folks are familiar with MS Windows and don't know anything about Linux, but they are "intrigued" by the prototype.
I hope to make a trip to the mission sometime and show them what I've done. I'm currently working on designing a cheap enclosure that would be low cost and easy to ship and I'm also trying out a different fanless motherboard to see how well it works.
I'm posting this here for anyone who might have a similar need or interest in this kind of thing and I welcome your ideas and feedback.
Om Goeckermann
There is a nice looking (30seconds boot time) preconfigured Linux-ish OS+basic tools at http://prestomypc.com
They very well might give you an NGO price and should have fewer vulnerabilities than Ubuntu.
This is also bootable on a wondoze machine :)
Om
"Pollution is a symbol of design failure."
-William McDonough
3:12 PM, 27 Aug 2009 | Permalink
Aaron Beals
@Om Good point about the vulnerabilities, though I'd argue that the Ubuntu repository managers do a good job of issuing patches regularly... which leads me to my main point:
Not to fork the discussion too much here, but what's the best way to keep Linux-based machines--whether Ubuntu, Presto, or any other distro--up to date?
Most distros now include update managers, but how many end users that we're looking to outfit with these machines will end up running the update manager on a regular basis? Should we pursue a distribution that has a push-based or auto-update model?
Even a rock-solid distro develops security leaks over time, as vulnerabilities are discovered (as I learned well back in '99 when my OpenSSH turned out to be the single vulnerability in my hardened server...)
10:59 AM, 28 Aug 2009 | Permalink
dan l
re: Pronto - thanks for the pointer. Fast boot is certainly nice and that might be something to consider if it gives them everything they need.
re: updates - that's a good point. With the flash boot of Ubuntu approach, I've disabled all auto-updating, since you don't want users seeing boxes popup or doing updates. Periodically, the flash drives would need to be re-initialized with the latest image. It may be worth considering a dedicated server machine and have the other machines boot over the network. Then you only have to update one image, but you also have an additional machine to maintain.
3:05 PM, 28 Aug 2009 | Permalink