suggestions for library pc environment

[Gianluca Cecchi]

Probably I have the opportunity to set-up (in my spare time) 4 PC for
the library of the town where I live.
They have been given as a present and are Dell GX260 PC with good cpu
and ram (but) with 20Gb hard disk.
There is not a robust infrastructure in the library at the moment.
There are 5 PC with Windos Xp (eventually I can also reuse them having
so a total of 9 stations), overbloated by antivirus and unnecessary
things usera have put on (some of them are accessed with admin
rights....)
I'm thinking about what kind of opensource service/suite suitable for
the library I could implement, based on fedora 11 of course that I'm
extensively using.
Or a mix of Fedora and CentOS.

I wouldn't like to keep it more complicated than needed, also because
then I will not have so much time to follow and support (I hope some
student in my town could learn and keep on eventually, though...;-)
AFAIK, the PCs at the moment are used mainly to go through the
internet, do instant messaging, create and print documents through a
printer connected to one PC used by the librarian), and are used by
Italian and foreign persons.
I think at the moment the records about books lent to the users are
only on paper... so it would be an added value to integrate with some
kind of sw able to manage the flow of the book of the books ..;-)

Some considerations below, I would like to receive back suggestions
and/or comments or other points I missed.

- predefined user for every pc (eventually different between different
PCs) or any user his/her login?
Second one would be far better because one could choose the preferred
language and also desktop customization
Also, the first time a user asks to use a PC, he/she has to register
and the library can keep track of this...
But I should setup a sw to let a guy easily make first registration
and let him/her use on any PC that is present....
(eventually it could be a step integrated with the sw used for
workflow of book loan..)
In first scenario, instead, I should provide a way so that every time
the predefined user logs on, he/she gets a completely new session,
without mixing personal data of different users: is there a gnome
setting that allows to save nothing about a session?

- LTSP? Could it be an option?
I used version 4.2 for a test case some years and it was well
documented and suitable... not tried version 5 that is provided in
F11.
Any comments on this? A weakness I see is that if LTSP server is down
or has a problem with the network, all the PC stations are impacted.
And I have to count one more PC to use as a server....


thanks in advance
Gianluca