Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

woogie · 2006-08-19 22:19:23

Hey everyone

Much as I love my Arch64 system, I'm increasingly running into a problem - friends. Though I may love them all dearly, they're to a man Windows users. And not in the power-user sense either. In the "I click over here because clicking over here works" sense. And every time they don't like my selection of music (how can you not like Rush?), or want to check e-mail or anything, my XFCE desktop, with its virtual desktops, funky menus, and pop-up on mouseover borders frightens them senseless.

So how would you go about making an outsider-friendly "playpen" for Windows users to feel moderately at home on an Arch system? Requirements for the system would be:

They can't hurt anything no matter how hard they try (locking them down even beyond a normal user account?)
Everything looks like it would on a Windows system (no virtual desktops, similar icons, is there a Linux browser that sucks as bad as IE yet?, etc)
Programs work like they would on Windows (point and click everything, drag and drop everything)

My thoughts would be using a KDE environment, then spending a lot of time locking it down but even then it might feel too Linux-y. I know Linspire, Lycoris and others have spent considerable effort doing the pseudo-windows thing, but is there a cross-distro way of doing a playpen like this easily?

kill · 2006-08-19 22:53:06

http://www.xpde.com/index.php That will make everyone very very happy.

pauldonnelly · 2006-08-20 02:03:19

Does it really have to feel especially Windowsy? It just has to lack scary confusing things. I'd think that just a simple desktop with a few icons and a taskbar would do fine. I'm not sure what the best setup for that would be though. Could Xfce be trimmed down to nothing more than that? Just a few icons to start a web browser and media player, plus a taskbar somewhere? I don't see any need to install a whole new DE here.

AllTom · 2006-08-20 11:59:09

Chroot jails have worked very well for me in the past, but you need lots of disk space, because you're installing an operating system within your own.

If that is over-the-top for this purpose, you could give them accounts and be careful about which groups you put them in--and be careful that permissions on folders such as your home aren't readable by theirs.

Dusty · 2006-08-20 14:30:11

You could also consider using an emulator such as qemu to run Windows or a second Linux. Speed may or may not be an issue.

Dusty

Bison · 2006-08-21 19:11:00

kill wrote:

http://www.xpde.com/index.php That will make everyone very very happy.

Have you ever actually run that? It is crazy buggy, last time I tried.

Dusty · 2006-08-21 19:37:11

Which, QEMU? I had it running under Ubuntu without any problems this summer. Tried UML first and it was horrid, but QEMU was nice.

Dusty

cactus · 2006-08-21 20:30:36

I have been meaning to try openvz.
You might also try xen or even vmware-player.

pressh · 2006-08-21 20:34:37

Bison wrote:

kill wrote:
http://www.xpde.com/index.php That will make everyone very very happy.
Have you ever actually run that? It is crazy buggy, last time I tried.

What do you expect, it does try to be like windows xp

woogie · 2006-08-21 22:58:12

pressh wrote:

Bison wrote:
kill wrote:
http://www.xpde.com/index.php That will make everyone very very happy.
Have you ever actually run that? It is crazy buggy, last time I tried.
What do you expect, it does try to be like windows xp

*rimshot*

Thanks for the advice everyone ^_^ I think I'll look into getting something like Freespire or another "superfun friendly distro" either chrooted or emulated into my system, as my current attempts to "Windowsify" KDE have simply left me with an ugly DE, which is only half the equation (it has to be Windows-ugly, not just ugly )

Arch Linux

#1 2006-08-19 22:19:23

Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#2 2006-08-19 22:53:06

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#3 2006-08-20 02:03:19

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#4 2006-08-20 11:59:09

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#5 2006-08-20 14:30:11

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#6 2006-08-21 19:11:00

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#7 2006-08-21 19:37:11

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#8 2006-08-21 20:30:36

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#9 2006-08-21 20:34:37

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

#10 2006-08-21 22:58:12

Re: Building an outsider-friendly playpen for an Arch system?

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