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I'm considering testing Ubuntu Touch for a public kiosk application. Most of the tablets is around 7-12 inches but are there any tablets that is around 18-24 inches for Ubuntu Touch?

And can I lock it with Firefox full screen on start and disable home button?

Thanks!

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  • My experience is that while you can start firefox in fullscreen mode, it is very easy for the user to switch back to normal view and do anything. I had better results with chromium or chrome, where there is actually a kiosk mode you can only exit with Alt+F4. Run chome or chromium with startparameters: --kiosk --kiosk-printing like this: chromium-browser --kiosk --kiosk-printing, but being said, I only tested this with the UNity-desktop, not with ubuntu-touch.
    – mondjunge
    Sep 4, 2015 at 11:12

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I've actually written pair of quite in-depth articles on using Ubuntu for web kiosks. I used Chrome but there's little difference. You can start from a full install or an Ubuntu Server install (and just install the bits you need).

There is far too much to go into but I'll give you the brief outline here:

  1. Install things you'll need. Here's a suggestion if you're coming from Server:

    sudo apt install --no-install-recommends xorg openbox firefox pulseaudio

  2. Prep the browser. Chrome has its own kiosk mode but Firefox will likely need something like R-Kiosk installing.

  3. Create a script of things to launch (pulseaudio, firefox, etc) in the X session. If you're coming from a Desktop install, you'll need to disable some things (like lightdm) too.

  4. Create a new Upstart script (assuming 14.04 LTS) to launch X and start that script. You'll be launching something like this:

    sudo -u $USER startx /etc/X11/Xsession /opt/kiosk.sh --

  5. Consider security, networking, remote access, etc, etc.

As for hardware, you can get dedicated kiosk hardware, or just take a consumer 24" screen, a USB touchscreen overlay and a low-end computer (even a Raspberry Pi 2) and put the two together. Even if you have to custom-make an enclosure, it's likely going to be cheaper than a 24" tablet.

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  • Really good answer! Thanks :) The problem with Chrome is that if the internet connection is down, then there's no turning back ("the page can not be displayed."). I think R-kiosk has an auto reconnect after X seconds
    – Hundkartan Jonas
    Sep 4, 2015 at 11:31
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    In both cases you could have another script running in the background checking the connectivity (ie pinging your host) and if it fails for a number of attempts, it could either interop with the browser or raise a new window above it to display an error message. And similarly, reverse that when the connection comes back online. That's probably a better solution than just waiting for it to recover, or praying R-Kiosk does its job.
    – Oli ♦
    Sep 4, 2015 at 12:04

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