The first thing I did was download and burn Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Herron to a disk.  This was eventually done on a “gasp” Windows machine, since the gOS burning software was somehow not able to burn a readable .iso.  So…

1. I installed Ubuntu
2. I installed the Firefox Flash Plugin
3. Installed mplayer, mplayer plugin, xine and codecs (see Medibuntu)
4. Created a user “guest”
5. Downloaded sabayon and created a profile “guest” then configured account and assigned the profile to user “guest”  See this article for more.
6. Changed Default file formats in Open Office.
7. Edited Menus, removed some items from the Panel, added Desktop Launchers for Firefox, Open Office Word Processor, Open Office Spreadsheet and Xine Movie Player.
8. Once everything was set up the way I wanted in “guest”, I logged out of guest, and back in a different account.
9. Set up a printer. I went to System>Administration>Printing.  Clicked add printer.  It automatically found our HP 4050tn and I followed the instructions to add it.
10. Using this as a guide I did the following:

I bacame root

sudo su

Created backup and restore scripts for guest account

cd /root
touch backup restore
chmod 700 backup restore

Opened Backup in editor

cd /root
sudo gedit backup

Pasted the following into backup

#!/bin/bash

IMAGES=/root/images
USER=guest

mkdir -p $IMAGES
rm -f "$IMAGES/$USER.tar"
tar -cpPf "$IMAGES/$USER.tar" "/home/$USER"

edited restore:

cd /root
sudo gedit restore

Pasted the following into restore:

#!/bin/bash

IMAGES=/root/images
USER=guest

mkdir -p $IMAGES
rm -fR "/home/$USER"
tar -xpPf "$IMAGES/$USER.tar"

Setup the restore script to execute on system startup. This allows a system reboot to reset any changes made to guest’s desktop.

cd /etc/init.d
ln -s /root/restore restore
update-rc.d restore start 99 2 .

It is also a good idea to put in a cron job to do automatic updates. As root I did this:

crontab -e

Add this line:

* */4 * * * (PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin && apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y) > /dev/null 2>&1

I then ran the backup script

cd /root
sudo ./backup

11. I then went to System>Administration>Login Window.  On the security tab I checked Enable Timed Login, set the user to guest and set the time to 10 seconds.  This means that when the machine is turned on it will allow you ten seconds to login as someone other then guest, otherwise guest will be logged in automatically without entering a password.
12. I put it out for patrons to use.  So far one patron has been on for about an hour and she has had no problems.  She says it is working fine.  It will be very interesting to see how this works as we go forward.

The everex pc arrived today and the reviews of gos being a total piece of crap os are true.  I am sure that anyone with tech skills would put on a Distro like Ubuntu, and those without tech skills (like probably most of the customers who might buy it from walmart.com)  Would be throughly confused.  I will be installing ubuntu on it tomorrow.  In the mean time, I have found some good posts on how to “deep freeze” the desktop in Ubuntu.  I will let you know exactly what I do and, how it works.

The machine itself seems ok, but as many reviewers have said, the keyboard and speakers are very junky.