TurnKey Client

This wiki page exists as a result of, and in partnership with this thread on the TKL forums.

TKL Client Core is to the (yet to be developed) TKL Client range what TKL Core is to the TKL Server Appliance range.

A first patch have been developed, you can test it and give feedback here.

The ideas so far are:

• Base TKL Lucid Core OS with modifcation (remove most current services, eg Webmin, SSH, WebShell etc) with
• Desktop GUI:
  • X Window System (X11)
  • LXDM - LXDE graphical login manager
  • OpenBox Window Manager
  • Core LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) components (not full Lubuntu desktop) consisting of:
    • LXTerminal (Terminal)
    • LeafPad (Text Editor)
    • PCManFM (File Manager)
    • LXPanel (Panel - also handles menu)
    • and a few other bits...
  • A (yet to be finalised) network manager. Wicd? (apparently works well for wireless, not sure about wired connections). NM-applet? (this is what Lubuntu uses but is a Gnome app so will need to include significant Gnome dependencies)
  • Web browser (perhaps Firefox? Chromium?) with default ad and flash blocking of some sort. Ideally all likely plug-in architectures would be supported out of the box (eg flash, java, etc).
  • Synaptic Package Manager
  • Some sort of remote connectivity, an implementation of NX technology has been flagged as a potential, but RDP is probably the go due to the Microsoft 'standard' (damn I hate that MS sometimes!) Ideally some sort of NAT traversal would be great too
  • A user account setup during install (so user does not run as root by default)
  • Ultimately a custom TKL theme (perhaps in a couple of different colours)? Not a priority.

There is also consideration that it may be relevant to create a KDE & Gnome based Core Client as well. Some of the proposed TKL Core Client appliances may be:

• TurnKey "Chromium": a minimal system optimized for browsing the web and running webapps. (e.g., the online banking usage scenario)
• TKL Desktop: TKL minimal desktop including basic productivity apps such as Abiword, ePDFreader etc. Media center: best of breed open source software optimized for use as a home entertainment / media center. Sort of the same usage scenario as Apple TVbut open source. None of the proprietary restrictions. XBMC/Enna may be candidates here?
• Development SDKs: Every year tens of thousands of people start learning a new language or development framework. One of the first things they all have to figure out is which collection of open source tools are available to help get them started. Imagine if TurnKey provides ready-to-use SDKs preloaded with all the tools you could want for web development, Gnome, KDE, Java (e.g., Eclipse),Android, even Mono/Moonlight.
• Penetration testing: An important part of improving security involves doing penetration tests to try to simulate an attack by the bad guys. These usually require lots of specialized tools for information gathering, scanning (e.g., nmap), vulnerability assessment and exploitation (e.g., metasploit). Here too there is a key problem of aiding discovery and integrating the components to work nicely together. The best known distro in this space is BackTrack which is also based on Ubuntu, and I'd love to join forces with them, but even if they don't collaborate with us, we can take the best ideas and build an appliance which leverages the standard TurnKey advantages.
• System rescue/AntiMalware: Windows machines in your office start flaking out due to a malware infestation. Our hero walks in with a TurnKey System Rescue USB/Live CD that knows how to update itself with the latest AV/malware signatures, and cleans out the bad stuff from a safe, reliable computing environment. System rescue/recovery:Suitable for cross platform data recovery. Could be included/merged with either AntiMalware or HDD tools? Or be on its own?
• HDD tools: sysadmin needs to resize partitions and such on a given system. You often need to boot into another independent system to be able to do that. Once you do there are nice open source tools that can manipulate partition and filesystem sizes and they even support NTFS if I"m not mistaken. Audio/video editing: we can leverage the work done by Ubuntu Studio and start from there on a TurnKey version.
• Visual design/editing: appliance with GIMP and Inkscape and the like.
• Game emulation: these days computers are powerful enough to faithfully emulate a huge range of old systems with the right software (e.g., MESS and MAME). Imagine an all in one device you can load with all those old videos games you spent so many hours playing with as a kid. The right appliance could help you set that up make it easier for retro-gaming enthusiasts to preserve history and even introduce a new generation to the video games of yore. If you're an "old timer" like me, and haven't yet had the pleasure of bringing your childhood video games to life you should try it sometime. It can be a lot of fun!
• MultiSeat: allow multiple keyboards, mice and monitors (not sure how sound goes?) to be connected to a single PC. Multiple concurrent users logged into and manipulating their own desktops simultaneously.
• Evil Ubuntu: a version of stock Ubuntu that comes with all the packages the typical user needs to install but don't usually come with Ubuntu due to idealogical reasons. Evil stuff like video codecs, flash support, Skype, WINE for Windows compatibility, etc. Anything the typical user is likely to need that can legally be bundled into an appliance.

Not strictly client OS but relevant ideas (ie contain a client component):

• Cafe (server & client): A setup specifically for use in an internet cafe environment, may or may not contain configuration relevant to Multiseat (above) and/or LTSP server (below). Ideally would be great if it could also handle wireless connection (to allow users to bring their own PC and use the cafe wifi hotspot). Mkahawa seems like it could be useful software?
• LTSP server: Used to boot diskless thin clients , and provide an LXDE environment on clients (Ubuntu can already be setup to do this - but AFAIK by default it only provides Gnome desktop).