TC with only a web browser and nothing more

[prel]

Hi guys, I would very much like to have a TC remix that includes nothing more but a web browser, say Opera. I would like to have it on a USB key or a CD or whatever that when booted skips all user prompts and boots directly into the web browser. In other words I need a *bootable web browser* - no wallpaper, no launcher menu, even I do not need to to see the desktop at all - just a single web browser.
Is that possible? Has anyone else attempted to cook such build?
I'm willing to do it myself so it would be great if you could at least point me to the right resources to start.
Thanks.

[SamK]

Hi and welcome.

Producing a bootable USB flash drive which opens directly with Opera should be reasonably simple with a bit of help from the available web pages:
http://www.tinycorelinux.com/concepts.html.
http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php
http://www.tinycorelinux.com/faq.html
They may not be entirely up to date but will get you started.  It will be helpful to understand the different modes of TC operation and decide whether you want to have a persistent home directory or have it backed up to a compressed file on the stick at the end of each session and restored (uncompressed) at the start of each session..  The standard installation creates a single user called "tc", so your bootable stick will be produced with this account,

A general outline of the steps in creating the bootable USB stick is:

• Download the TC ISO and burn to CD
• Boot from the CD
• Use the tool provided in Control Panel to create a bootable USB stick
• Boot from the USB stick
• Use the tool provided in Control Panel to Set TCE Drive to your stick
• Use the inbuilt tool, AppBrowser to install Opera
• Create a plain text file in /home/tc/.X.d with a single line    "opera &"   (omit the quotes)
• Reboot and Opera should start up automatically.

Some things to be aware of:
Using the provided tool to create a bootable USB stick will destroy everything on the stick

Creating the bootable USB stick from the CD will require you to install some applications.  Do this using AppBrowser.  Install them using the OnBoot option. The apps will be identified by the tool-script but from memory they are dosfstools,  syslinux, and possibly perl5.

Ensure you add the bootcode waitusb=5 when prompted. This is in addition to any other bootcode you require.  Again, see the wik etc.

That's an outline of the theory, over to you for the practice.  

This still allows Opera web browser to be closed and show the desktop but seems to be one way of doing what you want - boot to a web browser.

Good luck.
  

[thane]

FWIW, I'd suggest including sound (ALSA or OSS), Flash, and maybe a PDF plugin to give fuller access to web content.

[jumico]

With chrome I think the pdf plugin is natively included.  Not flash though.

[tinypoodle]

With chrome I think the pdf plugin is natively included.  Not flash though.

Go figure... But chromium (incl. deps) is more than 3x bigger than opera (9.64), so there might be combinations of browsers plus pdf viewer actually lighter in footprint.
Personally I have never used a pdf viewer in TC, but instead one of the available online viewers (Of course such wouldn't allow offline viewing, if that is required).

[al3]

With chrome I think the pdf plugin is natively included.  Not flash though.

I installed Chrome and PDFs do NOT work with it. Maybe I need another extension? I can view them using Xpdf, but not from within Chrome. Maybe there is a way... I'm brand new to TC+

[Zendrael]

Hello!

I already did that with my Linux distro: LeafWeb LeafWeb GNU/Linux beta test

I am now porting it to TC - but I use Firefox as the browser engine (and also, support all the FF add-ons and themes).

Is that what you are looking for?

Best regards

[vinnie]

nice idea

[Zendrael]

Thanks!

[rhodius]

Very interesting, Zendrael!

Have you seen Xpud? It was/is basically a Firefox OS. Doesn't look it's been updated in a while, though.

[Zendrael]

Thank you @rhodius!

Sure, Xpud is a gret OS too! Specially the boot time! Adn I agree with that seems that it is not updated for a while...

The video that I posted is the 2009 version of the system, now I am using the FireFox 9 as a base system. It can run on a BSD system too.

The goal is to let the user use the system like a ChromeOS but WITHOUT the need of a google account. The user also CAN: use local printers, share local folders, browse local folders, view local photos and videos (with subtitles), play music, use offline applications if they are installed as extensions... and all that teh usar can do when he is connected.

With a few more days I will put a iso image for download (i am just having trouble with gecko-mediaplayer and java on TC).

Best regards!

[vinnie]

I'm waiting for Your publication in this section to try it! 
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/board,43.0.html

[mardangga]

It's look great, Zendrael!
I can't wait to see the final release