HowTos for the desktop
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KDE Kiosk mode
Two default profiles are included:
debian_edu_pupils (enabled for members of the students file group)
- customized set of icons appears on student desktops
- makes sure that the programs behind the desktop icons also show up in the kde panel
- adept is not started
- makes sure that students cannot start another kde session
- disables possibility to gain root access for students
debian_edu_root (enabled for the root user and members of the admins file group)
- adds a desktop icon to connect to the local webserver on tjener to provide easy access to all the administration programs
Note:: modifications to the profiles can be done using kiosktool. However, unless you follow the step below, your changes will be overwritten by upgrades.
If you want to modify the kiosk profiles, you can either copy the existing ones and modify them, or create new kiosk profiles in (for example) /etc/kde3/kioskprofiles/ and enable them in /etc/kde-user-profile. The kiosk tool will do this for you if you click "profile properties" and browse to a new folder.
If you don't want to use kioskmode, disable it in /etc/kderc or /etc/kde-user-profile. (FIXME: in which of the two?!)
Modifying the kdm login screen
In Debian/Etch, the way to customize the kdm login screen was changed. Now, it is done by adding a file in /etc/default/kdm.d/ specifying variables to override the default.
Here is one example used to activate the theme in the desktop-base package:
USETHEME="true" THEME="/usr/share/apps/kdm/themes/debian-moreblue"
See the code in /etc/init.d/kdm for information on how these variables are used.
Flash
To install the Adobe Flash Player web browser plugin, install the flashplugin-nonfree debian package. You need to have non-free enabled in your sources list. It requires a working Internet connection and will download the precompiled binary from Adobe.
Sound with Flash in thin clients
If sound doesn't sound properly in thin clients when browsing certain pages (as youtube.com), it can be solved installing a package in the thin clients server. To do it, login as root in the server:
Warning: The software you install has no trust path. Software installed with apt-get is cryptographically signed to ensure a trust path.
wget http://pulseaudio.vdbonline.net/libflashsupport/libflashsupport_1.0~2219-1_i386.deb
Then:
dpkg -i libflashsupport_1.0~2219-1_i386.deb
To get the sound working, you also need the latest flashplugin-nonfree package installed (23st of Jan: 9.0.115.0.1~etch1).
Other useful plugins
After adding the multimedia repository (see below):
apt-get install mozilla-mplayer mozilla-acroread acroread-plugins
Playing DVDs
libdvdcss is needed for playing most commercial! DVDs. For legal reasons it's not included in Debian (Edu). If you are legally allowed to use it, you can use the packages from debian-multimedia.org. Add the multimedia repository and install multimedia and dvd libraries:
apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs
Using the multimedia repository
To use www.debian-multimedia.org visit the homepage and find a mirror, or just add
deb http://debian-multimedia.org etch main
to your sources list. Eventually install key package for multimedia (debian-multimedia-keyring).