.NET 7 is now available in Fedora Linux. This article briefly describes what .NET is, some of its recent and interesting features, how to install it, and presents some examples showing how it can be used.

.NET 7

.NET is a platform for building cross platform applications. It allows you to write code in C#, F#, or VB.NET. You can easily develop applications on one platform and deploy and execute them on another platform or architecture.

In particular, you can develop applications on Windows and run them on Fedora Linux instead! This is one less hurdle if you want to move from a proprietary platform to Fedora Linux. It’s also possible to develop on Fedora and deploy to Windows. Please note that in this last scenario, some Windows-specific application types, such as GUI Windows applications, are not available.

.NET 7 includes a number of new and exciting features. It includes a large number of performance enhancements to the runtime and the .NET libraries, better APIs for working with Unix file permissions and tar files, better support for observability via OpenTelemetry, and compiling applications ahead-of-time. For more details about all the new features in .NET 7, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/dotnet-7.

Fedora Linux builds of .NET 7 can even run on the IBM Power (ppc64le) architecture. This is in addition to support for 64-bit ARM/Aarch64 (which Fedora Linux calls aarch64 and .NET calls arm64), IBM Z (s390x) and 64-bit Intel/AMD platforms (which Fedora Linux calls x86_64 and .NET calls x64).

.NET 7 is a Standard Term Support (STS) release, which means upstream will stop maintaining it on May 2024. .NET in Fedora Linux will follow that end date. If you want to use a Long Term Support (LTS) release, please use .NET 6 instead. .NET 6 reaches its end of Life on November 2024. For more details about the .NET lifecycle, see https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/support/policy/dotnet-core.

If you are looking to set up a development environment for developing .NET applications on Fedora Linux, take a look at https://fedoramagazine.org/set-up-a-net-development-environment/.

The .NET Special Interest Group (DotNetSIG) maintains .NET in Fedora Linux. Please come and join us to improve .NET on Fedora Linux! You can reach us via IRC (#fedora-devel) or mailing lists (dotnet-sig@lists.fedoraproject.org) if you have any feedback, questions, ideas or suggestions.

How to install .NET 7

To build C#, F# or VB.NET code on Fedora Linux, you will need the .NET SDK. If you only want to run existing applications, you will only need the .NET Runtime.

Install the .NET 7 Software Development Kit (SDK) using this command:

sudo dnf install -y dotnet-sdk-7.0

This installs all the dependencies, including a .NET runtime.

If don’t want to install the entire SKD but just want to run .NET 7 applications, you can install either the ASP.NET Core runtime or the .NET runtime using one of the following commands:

sudo dnf install -y aspnetcore-runtime-7.0
sudo dnf install -y dotnet-runtime-7.0

This style of package name applies to all versions of .NET on all versions of Fedora Linux. For example, you can install .NET 6 using the same style of package name:

sudo dnf install -y dotnet-sdk-6.0

To make certain .NET 7 is installed, run dotnet –info to see all the SDKs and Runtimes installed.

License and Telemetry

The .NET packages in Fedora Linux are built from fully Open Source source code. The primary license is MIT. The .NET packages in Fedora Linux do not contain any closed source or proprietary software. The Fedora .NET team builds .NET offline in the Fedora Linux build system and removes all binaries present in the source code repositories before building .NET. This gives us a high degree of confidence that .NET is built from reviewed sources.

The .NET packages in Fedora Linux do not collect any data from users. All telemetry is disabled in the Fedora builds of .NET. No data is collected from anyone running .NET and no data is sent to Microsoft. We run tests to verify this for every build of .NET in Fedora Linux.

“Hello World” in .NET

After installing .NET 7, you can use it to create and run applications. For example, you can use the following steps to create and run the classic “Hello World” application.

Create a new .NET 7 project in the C# language:

dotnet new console -o HelloWorldConsole

This will create a new directory named HelloWorldConsole and create a trivial C# Hello World that prints hello world.

Then, switch to the project directory:

cd HelloWorldConsole

Finally, build and run your the application:

dotnet run

.NET 7 will build your program and run it. You should see a “Hello world” output from your program.

“Hello Web” in .NET

You can also use .NET to create web applications. Lets do that now.

First, create a new web project, in a separate directory (not under our previous project):

dotnet new web -o HelloWorldWeb

This will create a simple Hello-World style application based on .NET’s built-in web (Empty ASP.NET Core) template.

Now, switch to that directory:

cd HelloWorldWeb

Finally, build and run the application:

dotnet run

You should see output like the following that shows the web application is running.

Building…
info: Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime[14]
Now listening on: http://localhost:5105
info: Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime[0]
Application started. Press Ctrl+C to shut down.
info: Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime[0]
Hosting environment: Development
info: Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime[0]
Content root path: /home/omajid/temp/HelloWorldWeb

Use a web browser to access the application. You can find the URL in the output at the “Now listening on:” line. In my case that’s http://localhost:5105:

firefox http://localhost:5105

You should see a “Hello World” message in your browser.

Using .NET with containers

At this point, you have successfully created, built and run .NET applications locally. What if you want to isolate your application and everything about it? What if you want to run it in a non-Fedora OS? Or deploy it to a public/private/hybrid cloud? You can use containers! Let’s build a container image for running your .NET program and test it out.

First, create a new project:

dotnet new web -o HelloContainer

Then, switch to that project directory:

cd HelloContainer

Then add a Dockerfile that describes how to build a container for our application.

FROM fedora:37
RUN dnf install -y dotnet-sdk-7.0 && dnf clean all
RUN mkdir /HelloContainer/
WORKDIR /HelloContainer/
COPY . /HelloContainer/
RUN dotnet publish -c Release
ENV ASPNETCORE_URLS="http://0.0.0.0:8080"
CMD ["dotnet" , "bin/Release/net7.0/publish/HelloContainer.dll"]

This will start with a default Fedora Linux container, install .NET 7 in it, copy your source code into it and use the .NET in the container to build the application. Finally, it will set things up so that running the container runs your application and exposes it via port 8080.

You can build and run this container directly. However, if you are familiar with Dockerfiles, you might have noticed that it is quite inefficient. It will re-download all dependencies and re-build everything on any change to any source file. It produces a large container image at the end which even contains the full .NET SDK. An option is to use a multi-stage build to make it faster to iterate on the source code. You can also produce a smaller container at the end that contains just your application and .NET dependencies.

Overwrite the Dockerfile with this:

FROM registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora:37 as dotnet-sdk
RUN dnf install -y dotnet-sdk-7.0 && dnf clean all

FROM registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora:37 as aspnetcore-runtime
RUN dnf install -y aspnetcore-runtime-7.0 && dnf clean all

FROM dotnet-sdk as build-env
RUN mkdir /src
WORKDIR /src
COPY *.csproj .
RUN dotnet restore
COPY . .
RUN dotnet publish -c Release -o /publish

FROM aspnetcore-runtime as app
WORKDIR /publish
COPY --from=build-env /publish .
ENV ASPNETCORE_URLS="http://0.0.0.0:8080"
EXPOSE 8080
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "HelloContainer.dll"]

Now install podman so you can build and run the Dockerfile:

sudo dnf install -y podman

Build the container image:

podman build -t hello-container .

Now, run the container we just built:

podman run -it -p 8080:8080 hello-container

A note about the arguments. The port is configured with the -p flag so that port 8080 from inside the container is available as port 8080 outside too. This allows you to connect to the application directly. The container is run interactively (-it) so you can see the output and any errors that come up. Running interactively is usually not needed when deploying an application to production.

Finally, connect to the container using a web browse. For example:

firefox http://localhost:8080

You should see a “Hello World” message.

Congratulations! You now have a .NET application running inside a Fedora container!

Conclusion

This was a whirlwind overview of .NET 7 in Fedora Linux and covers building and running an application using plain Fedora RPM packages as well as creating an application for a .NET application using only Fedora Linux.

If you have an interest in using or improving .NET on Fedora Linux, please join us!

Fedora Project will be present at FOSDEM 2023. This article describes this gathering and a few of the events on the agenda. I assume if you are reading the Fedora Magazine, you already know what FOSDEM is, but I’ll start with a small intro anyway.

Define FOSDEM

FOSDEM is the biggest event in the known universe for free/libre and open-source developers and enthusiasts.

Many good people from around the world meet and discuss common topics and define the future of F/LOSS. The event is held in Brussels at the beginning of February. Some of us, who are coming from a bit warmer countries, are calling it FrOSDEM, because it’s usually freezing

Why attend?

If you are a contributor already or you want to start doing good with your skills for the F/LOSS universe, this event is a must. 

I know everyone has their reason for visiting, but I’ll share the most common ones:

• You meet the people creating and supporting the products that power the Internet that you already use.
• If you are a contributor already, you have a chance to meet with your team and people using your product.
• You learn so much new stuff quickly.
• You enlarge your horizons by looking at something outside your bubble. If you are a fan of Fedora, go and learn more about Security or Javascript.
• You have a chance to talk to others with the same passion as yours and even become friends for life. A good friend is always a commodity!
• You achieve your daily steps goal because the ULB campus is enormous, and you will have to move a lot to get to the room you would like to visit.
• You have a chance to volunteer and help the community if this is what drives you.
• You attend an event with a great Code of Conduct.

Fedora at FOSDEM 2023

It’s a tradition for the Fedora Project team to be there to present some of our work from the last year and to allow you to share your feedback on what we do well and how we can improve.

Meet, greet, and see our community in action

One of the most extraordinary things at FOSDEM, which I deliberately didn’t mention in the previous section, is the project booths. In almost every building, you will see people behind a branded table, ready to talk to you about their project, its values, and its mission.

 I have to mention the goodies here, as well. You will return home with many items from your favorite projects. Be sure to continue supporting them further.  

We at Fedora will be happy to welcome you to our booth as well. You can talk to the community members, give us constructive feedback, and see some of the things we prepared.

Our booth location is in building H, alongside the rest of the Linux Distros.

Stop by and say hi in your language! We are looking forward to talking to you!

We want to share what makes our work exceptional

At each FOSDEM we have a good number of talks related to what we do at Fedora. I am listing only some of them to make it enjoyable for you to browse the agenda and discover the rest yourself.

1: Fedora CoreOS – Your Next Multiplayer Homelab Distro

Using Fedora CoreOS in a Selfhosted Homelab to setup a Multiplayer Server

Speakers

Akashdeep Dhar
 Objective Lead for Fedora Websites & Apps, Fedora Council
 Software Engineer, Red Hat Community Platform Engineering

Sumantro Mukherjee
 Elected Representative, Fedora Council
 Software Quality Engineer, Red Hat

Intro

Fedora CoreOS is an essential, monolithic, automatically updating operating system optimized for running containers. It focuses on offering the best container host for executing containerized workloads securely and at scale. We will show a case study of setting up Fedora CoreOS as a self-hosted Homelab distribution for globally accessible (using secure network tunneling) multiplayer servers for video games (namely Minecraft, Valheim, etc.).

When and Where

Saturday, Feb-4 at the Containers devroom from 11:30 to 12:00

2: Creative Freedom Summit Retrospective

Speakers

Emma Kidney

Part of Red Hat’s Community Platform Engineering team since 2021. 
Designer at Red Hat’s Community Design Team. 

Jess Chitas 

Part of Red Hat’s Community Platform Engineering team.
Creator of Fedora’s mascot – Colúr, and Fedora Brand Guidelines Booklet.

Intro

The Creative Freedom Summit is a virtual event focused on promoting Open Source tools, spreading knowledge of how to use them, and connecting creatives across the FOSS ecosystem. The summit’s accomplishments and shortcomings will be examined in light of the event’s first year and potential changes for the following years.

When and Where

Sunday, Feb-5 at the Open Source Design Dev Room from 14:30 to 14:55

Where to find more related talks?

Our wiki page is a good start, but FOSDEM’s schedule catalog is even better. One life hack: select a good 30 min slot, go through all the rooms which might get your attention, and create a personal schedule in your favorite calendar app. Make sure you have a backup plan because some rooms might be fully occupied, and you cannot enter.

I want to interest you in a challenge

If you know more than I do about FOSDEM 2023 and have already prepared your schedule, share a single paragraph comment about your FOSDEM plan and list a few of your favorite talks. You will help the community understand the greatness of the event and find more reasons to make the trip to frosty Brussels.

See you there!

Catching signals from others is how we have started communicating as human beings. It all started, of course, with our vocal cords. Then we moved to smoke signals for long-distance communication. At some point, we discovered radio waves and are still using them for contact. This article will describe how you can tune in using Fedora Linux and an SDR dongle.

My journey

I got interested in radio communication as a hobby when I was a kid, while my local club, LZ2KRS, was still a thing. I was so excited to be able to listen and communicate with people worldwide. It opened a whole new world for me. I was living in a communist country back then and this was a way to escape just for a bit. It also taught me about ethics and technology.  

Year after year my hobby grew and now, in the Internet era with all the cool devices you can use, it’s getting even more exciting. So I want to show you how to do it with Fedora Linux and a hardware dongle.

What is Ham Radio

Amateur Radio (ham radio) is a popular hobby and service that brings people, electronics, and communication together. People use ham radio to talk across town, worldwide, or even into space, without the Internet or cell phones. 

What’s SWLing?

To broadcast with your ham radio or SDR system, you need to obtain a license from a governmental body. But to intercept signals and listen to the open communication between two amateur radio stations, you don’t need one.

The term SWLing comes from the abbreviation of Short Wave Listener, where you listen to stations communicating in the shortwave bands between 3 and 30 MHz. This can be used for long-distance communication using the ionosphere, a layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. 

To get started, you don’t need a license. Still, I recommend getting yourself an SWL sign to identify yourself in a listening contest. These are competitions for categories like who will discover the most connections in a month or who can listen to contacts from each country in the world. 

How to get an SWL Sign?

There are two options:

• Contact your national radio club and ask them to issue one for you. I got my Czech one, OK1-36568, after a few weeks.
• Join the Short Wave Amateur Radio Listening community and request a sign there.

You will get more information and help from either of these locations if you get stuck in some fashion! 

QSL Cards

You can also use your sign to send QSL cards via post or electronically. This is a great way to communicate with people worldwide and make friends.

Per Wikipedia, A QSL card is a written confirmation of either a two-way radio communication between two amateur radio or citizens band stations; a one-way reception of a signal from an AM radio, FM radio, television, or shortwave broadcasting station; or the reception of a two-way radio communication by a third party listener (in our case). 

A typical QSL card is the same size and made from the same material as a regular postcard; most are sent through snail mail. 

Replace the radio receiver with your Fedora Linux.

The focal point of the ham radio hobby is the radio transmitter/receiver. Most of the time, enthusiasts build their radio from scratch, but this differs from what I will write about here. 

SDR

A software-defined radio (SDR) system is a radio communication system that uses software for the modulation and demodulation of radio signals. In other words, a piece of hardware and software takes the place of a radio transmitter/receiver. This helps you discover more in a way that you are familiar with – a User Interface with built-in functions instead of the limited interface of a radio receiver. 

My explanation oversimplifies things, so if you want to go deep and read more about SDR, here is an excellent start.

SDR Set Up under Fedora Linux

Choosing the proper hardware

If you search the Internet for an SDR dongle, you’ll find tons of ideas depending on your budget. In this tutorial, I’ll work with the one I have, which works well under Fedora 37 – it is available from Nooelec.

A note: The dongle covers frequencies from 25MHz to 1750MHz, which doesn’t cover the Short Wave bands. You would need an additional device to listen to them. This is included in the package I linked above. Some other hardware providers offer all-in-one products.

Check if the dongle is visible

Before installing anything, detect whether Fedora Linux recognizes your USB dongle. I hope you didn’t buy a fake one :-). Use the following command to list the USB devices on your system.

lsusb

One of the output lines (in the case of Nooelec) should be

Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2838 DVB-T

Now proceed by installing the software you need

Fedora offers a set of tools and drivers packaged as a group. Even though you would not use all the components in this package from the beginning, I recommend installing it. You’ll have more software to play with.

sudo dnf group install 'Electronic Lab'

I advise you to explore what’s in the group by running this command:

sudo dnf group info 'Electronic Lab'

Now check if you have everything set up correctly by running:

rtl_test

You should see something like this:

Do not forget to kill this process because the device will be busy and cannot be used in the next step. A simple Ctrl + c works.

Gqrx

You have the dongle already in your device’s USB port and all the software you need to get started. 

 Now it’s time to intercept your first signal. Start the program called Gqrx. Don’t be alarmed by the strange interface. You’ll get used to it. 

Configure the I/O Device Screen

From the “Device” Dropdown, select the ‘RealtekRTL2838...’

Leave the rest untouched for the moment.

If you don’t see your device there, click the “Device Scan” button at the bottom of the screen.

When your device is selected, click “OK” and the dialogue will close.

Configure the frequency screen

Before you start intercepting signals, ensure there is something out there that proves that everything works correctly. Since the dongle covers the FM radio band as well, do this:

• Locate your favorite radio station’s frequency. Mine is 105MHZ

• Set it in the Frequency field

• Select WFM (stereo) in the “Mode” dropdown. If you don’t do this, you will not hear a sound.

Play

And now, you need to start the reception by clicking the “play button” in your main menu. You will see the frequency visualized like this:

If you hear a sound, everything is ready to move to the next step.

If you don’t hear anything, check if everything is set up correctly. You may ask a questions in the comments for this article; I can direct you to the proper forum to solve this.

Feel free to play with some more FM broadcasts. You have the antenna for it in your pack.

Let’s go Short Wave

In the case of the Nooelec, you need to add one more device to the USB dongle and turn it on. Instructions on how to do that are included in the package you receive.  

In short, you plug the “Up Converter” into your USB dongle and make sure the switch is in the “convert” position. Some videos are available on how to do it if you get stuck.

You will need an antenna and a good location

Now things get trickier. If you live in an area where you don’t see an open space out your window or other buildings surround your building, you might have trouble catching a Short Wave radio amateur signal. 

Let’s try this to see if it works

Try to be in the open. I usually listen from my terrace, which could be better but works under particular conditions.

Apart from the hardware, you would need a long wire to act as your antenna. Try the antenna that comes with the hardware initially – the telescoping one from Nooelec, but it will catch only powerful signals.

Let’s go back to Gqrx

Now with the converter, you need to make some changes to your device screen:

Please note the –125Mhz for the LNB LO field. This is required for the Up Converter to work.

Tune your frequency to 14.100 Mhz and make sure your Mode is USB (standing for Upper sideband) because this is this band’s main demodulation option.

Then go to your FFT Settings screen, use the zoom slider, and set it to see about 100 kHz. In our case, you should have between 14.05 to 14.15 Mhz on your screen.

Also, click the “Enable Band Plan” to see the information about the SW bands you are exploring.

Then hit the play button and start exploring the space between 14.0 and 14.3 Mhz to get any amateur radio transmission.

When intercepting a transmission, adjust your settings to improve your listening experience. It’s a journey that you have already started.

Most probably, you will hear something like this:

“CQ CQ CQ this is ..(followed by the radio license number spelled with the ham radio phonetic alphabet). 

Listen very carefully, and by the call sign, you will be able to determine the location of the radio amateurs’ country.

You can visit the QRZCQ website to learn more about them and even send them a QSL card confirming their connection.

Keep the momentum going.

Now you have some tools and ideas for starting Short Wave Listening. 

This is the first step of an incredible and exciting journey you can have together with your Fedora Linux OS. 

You will discover the pleasure of building your antenna for the specific band, reading more about how the ionosphere helps, how to be a part of a listening competition, and what those Q-codes mean.

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As you might know, the Anaconda Web UI preview image has a simple “erase everything” partitioning right now because partitioning is a pretty big and problematic topic. On one hand, Linux guru people want to control everything; on the other hand, we also need to support beginner users. We are also constrained by the capabilities of the existing backend and storage tooling and consistency with the rest of Anaconda. Anaconda team is looking for your storage feedback to help us with design of the Web UI!

In general, partitioning is one of the most complex, problematic, and controversial parts of what Anaconda is doing. Because of that and the great feedback from the last blog, we decided to ask you for feedback again to know where we should focus. We’re looking for feedback from everyone. More answers are better here. We’d like to get input if you’re using Fedora, RHEL, Debian, OpenSUSE, Windows, or Linux, even if it’s just for a week. All these inputs are valuable!

Please help us shape one of the most complex parts of the Anaconda installer!

With just a few minutes of your time filling out the questionnaire, you can help us decide which path we’d like to choose for partitioning.

Questionnaire link: https://redhatdg.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_87bPLycfp1ueko6 

This article will describe the process of creating a kiosk or information “station” using Fedora Silverblue.

What is a kiosk

If you’ve had the occasion to visit a museum, you might have used a touchscreen monitor with useful information and insights of the items on display. Or if you’ve attended a public library, you might have used a workstation with a browser or a software aimed to the consultation of the book’s catalog. Or even in public places like train stations or public squares, you might have spotted big screens or televisions where you can see advertisement videos, or interacted with them in order to obtain information and services. These devices are kiosks. They are locked down environments, generally running a full screen application.

Under the hood there is usually a small PC (maybe a fan-less device or a so called industrial PC, capable of staying powered on without issues for long periods of time) or perhaps a Raspberry Pi. Many times they are powered by Linux!

Why Fedora Silverblue

Fedora Silverblue is a new generation of the desktop operating system. The main benefits of the system are atomic updates and immutability.

Atomic updates means that the update process will complete successfully and if not the operation will be abandoned and the system reverted to the previous state. This prevents situations where some packages are upgraded while others are not. This might occur, for example, due to a power loss in the middle of the update process, leading to an unstable or unbootable system.

In this context, immutability means part of the filesystem is read-only and the system files cannot be modified (at least not in the usual ways, read below). The term has been criticized by several parties: in fact, if you can update the system and install things, the system is actually mutable, so another term should be coined for these kinds of operating systems where there is a clearly defined distinction between the system, the applications and the changes made by the user. However this is not the topic of this article.

You can find more information about Fedora Silverblue in this article: What is Silverblue?

These features make the system more robust and secure. This is an important consideration since a kiosk is usually located in a remote place, accessible to the public (even if hidden inside some box or behind a TV), and difficult to reach in case of malfunctions.

If you have heard about Fedora IoT, you might think that it would be the perfect solution for this kind of operations. However, Fedora IoT, although sharing the same technologies as Fedora Silverblue (immutability, rpm-ostree, etc.), is not designed for and it doesn’t provide a graphical environment. Running headless is the expected use case for Fedora IoT.

GNOME Kiosk

GNOME Kiosk is a special GNOME session that “provides a desktop environment suitable for a fixed purpose, or single application deployments like wall displays and point-of-sale systems”. It provides a locked down GNOME session, without activities, dock, top bar, etc.

The required bits are available in the Fedora repository.

How to proceed

As a basic example, we will create a simple slideshow.

First of all let’s install Fedora Silverblue.

The first user created during initial setup becomes the administrator.

Go to Settings. Enable Sharing and enable Remote Login (that is SSH) in order to access the kiosk for remote management.

In Settings, go to Users and add a new user. Let’s call it “kiosk” and assign it a password.

Install GNOME Kiosk

Even though Fedora Silverblue is an immutable system, rpm-ostree still allows you to install packages from the DNF repositories. This is called layering. Read more on How I Customize Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kinoite.

Open the terminal and issue the following command.

sudo rpm-ostree install gnome-kiosk gnome-kiosk-script-session

To activate the layered packages, you will have to reboot the system.

Automatic login

We have to set the system to automatically log in as the “kiosk” user.

After the reboot, log in as the administrator user. Then go to Settings, Users, select the “kiosk” user, and enable Automatic Login.

Then log out (don’t reboot yet).

For reference you can enable automatic login from the command line. To do so, edit the file /etc/gdm/custom.conf, and add the following two lines to the [daemon] section.

[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=True
AutomaticLogin=kiosk

Configure the kiosk

At the login screen, select the “kiosk” user.

As a basic example, let’s create a slideshow of images. To do that we will use the GNOME image viewer (Eye of GNOME or eog). This is already installed on Fedora Silverblue as a Flatpak package. (Yes, you can run Flatpak applications from the command line.)

Put some images in the Pictures folder.

In the activities overview, you can find an application called Kiosk Script. Actually Gedit will open it and let you edit the script that will start when you select the Kiosk session at login. For reference, this script is named gnome-kiosk-script and it is located in the home directory under .local/bin.

Read the comments. Pay attention to the last line. If the program that you want to use in the kiosk session exits as soon as it is launched (or it runs in the background), you risk creating an infinite loop that will start a new window each second!

The slideshow script will look like this:

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! "$(pidof eog)" ]
then
   flatpak run org.gnome.eog -s /home/kiosk/Pictures
fi

sleep 1.0
exec "$0" "$@"

The above example script, will run eog in slideshow mode (indicated by the “-s” option) only if a process called eog isn’t already running. Make certain to take into account that the script can invoke itself in an infinite loop (it is instructed to do so by the last line). Note that if for some reason Eye of GNOME crashes, it will be launched again because of the “if” statement.

Save the script. And the full screen slideshow will start immediately! Don’t worry, you are not yet in the kiosk session. Press the super key and you can still use the dash and the applications overview.

Logout.

At the login screen click on the gear icon at the bottom right of the login page. Select “Kiosk Script Session (Wayland Display Server)”.

Insert the password and the full screen slideshow will start.
You will be in the locked down GNOME session, so you can’t use any application or desktop functions. If needed, you can still switch to a TTY to gain the command line using a combination like CTRL+ALT+F3

For reference, the file containing the user’s default session is /var/lib/AccountsService/users/kiosk

Session=gnome-kiosk-script-wayland

The last step is to reboot the machine.

Other types of kiosk

Other ideas could be:

• a full screen Firefox session (take a look at the gnome-kiosk-search-appliance RPM package)
• a video loop
• your own software specifically crafted for this purpose
• any application

Further improvements

You might modify the script to show the slideshow only at certain times of the day.

To make the system more robust and secure, you might add a password to GRUB and to the BIOS. You might also disable the TTYs.

Other useful ideas might be to enable automatic updates, and especially to implement greenboot, a health check framework developed for Fedora IoT.