notes.gords.net

A collection of bits and bobs, primarily to help my future self.

Public Access PCs

I recently created a new Windows 11 environment for public access PCs.

My aim was for the computers to be as clean as possible, so that when the user logs in, they see a well-organised Start Menu. When they open the installed apps (browsers, Office, Acrobat Reader, etc.) they aren't bombarded with a million dialogs.

Public Access PCs

I recently created a new Windows 11 environment for public access PCs.

My aim was for the computers to be as clean as possible, so that when the user logs in, they see a well-organised Start Menu. When they open the installed apps (browsers, Office, Acrobat Reader, etc.) they aren't bombarded with a million dialogs.

Through the use of (a lot of) GPO templates and registry changes, it's now as close to perfect as I can reasonably make it. Apps open super quickly. Users aren't prompted for anything. Privacy settings are private by default.

I wanted the users of these PCs, who aren't necessarily very computer-literate, to have the best experience possible.

I'm planning to document the various settings.

DuckDuckGo URL parameters

I wanted to provide a default search experience that was as uncluttered as possible. I found that DuckDuckGo supports configuration via URL parameters, which is perfect for an environment which is reset on reboot.

DDG have documented some of the parameters they support here, but there are others I found by changing the setting in the UI and observing what changed in the cookie DDG set. The URL parameters and the cookie settings are the same, except that each URL parameter is prefixed by 'k'.