NixOS Firefox Web Kiosk

This project provides a customizable and easy-to-deploy Firefox web kiosk powered by NixOS, the purely functional Linux distribution. It's ideal for setting up a secure, minimal, and dedicated web browsing environment.

Features

• Cage: A Wayland-based kiosk environment that runs Firefox in kiosk-mode, providing a dedicated full-screen browsing experience.
• Firefox: The popular web browser that provides a secure and performant browsing experience.
• NixOS: A purely functional Linux distribution that provides declarative configuration and reliable system management.

Benefits

• Security and Stability: Built on NixOS, the kiosk benefits from declarative configuration and reliable system management.
• Customizable: Easily configure network settings and the startup page.
• Reproducible Builds: Leverage the power of Nix to ensure consistent and reproducible builds across different machines.
• Minimalistic: Only essential components are included, ensuring a lightweight and focused browsing experience.

Caveats

• Experimental: This project is still in its early stages. Expect bugs and breaking changes.
• Firefox: The kiosk is currently limited to Firefox. Support for other browsers may be added in the future.
• Hardware: The kiosk is currently limited to x86_64 hardware. Support for other architectures may be added in the future.
• Static: The OS, as it stands, is persistent and non-upgradable. Software updates require an flake update, rebuild, and redeployment. This may change in the future.
• Quirky: This flake-based project uses a non-standard method for secrets management (see build.sh). This may change in the future.
• Bloated: Although every attempt has been made at minimalism, the resulting ISO image is still quite large for what it does (~1.6GB). More work is needed to reduce the image size.

PRs welcome to address any of these caveats!

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Nix package manager installed. Visit NixOS download page for installation instructions.
• Basic understanding of Unix-like environments.

Setup

1. Clone the Repository

   git clone https://github.com/Avunu/web_kiosk.git
   cd web_kiosk

2. Configure Environment Variables

   Create a env.nix file in the project root with your custom configuration. Use env.nix.example as a template:

    # env.nix
    {
        startPage = "https://www.google.com";
        timeZone = "America/New_York";
        wifiSSID = "YourWifiSSID"; # leave empty to disable wifi
        wifiPassword = "YourWifiPassword";
    }

   Make sure to replace https://startpage.com, America/New_York, YourWifiSSID, and YourWifiPassword with your desired startup page URL, timeZone, and Wi-Fi credentials. If you don't need Wi-Fi, you can replace YourWifiSSID and YourWifiPassword variables with empty strings.

3. Build the Kiosk

   Run the build script to create your NixOS-based web kiosk:

   ./build.sh

   This will generate an ISO image that you can use to boot your kiosk system. The image will be located in the result/iso/ directory.

Deployment

To deploy the kiosk:

• Burn the generated ISO image onto a USB drive or a CD.
• Boot the target device from this USB drive or CD.
• The kiosk will automatically connect to the specified Wi-Fi network and open Firefox to the defined start page.

Customization

You can further customize the kiosk by editing kiosk.nix and disable.nix files:

• kiosk.nix: Define the kiosk's behavior, appearance, and additional settings.
• disable.nix: Adjust disabled features or services to suit your security or performance needs.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit pull requests or open issues to suggest improvements or report bugs.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.