2006-04-26, 06:36 PM
I built and set up a pc for the sole purpose of displaying video on a TV either off the hard drive or LAN.
The idea is to have maximum "couch friendlyness", so that you never have to use the keyboard, and only a wireless mouse. Which isnt a very difficult task, excecpt for the login you complete after a boot. While the user could just leave it on (its a fairly stripped down low power system), at some point or another it will need to be rebooted by the user.
Is there a way to automattically login a user with very limited rights if no action is taken in a certain amount of time? or perhaps automatically unless a certain combination of buttons are pressed at boot time?
I havent done much looking around on the subject yet, but the first 3 google searches didnt turn anything up, if someone could point me in the right direction it would be appreciated.
I'm currently running FC5 on my test box, but if someone thinks another distro would work out better I'm all ears.
The idea is for non-linux users to use it, so any kind of preparation i can do for them is good.
Another alternate idea that would solve this problem, is if there were a way to have the bottom of the screen display a keyboard so the user could click letters into textboxes like many pda's allow this would give a kind of failsafe if a user wants to poke around beyond playing videos and doesnt want to bust out a keyboard or otherwise ends up where they shouldnt be.
My post turned into a short novel, thanks for getting this far :)