Once upon a time circa 1997 I made a javascript based windows shell for kiosk mode public terminal across 15 odd campus libraries. I had to buy a signing certificate from some CA to use the API that let me get rid of the netscape navigator chrome. All you could do on the computers was run netscape navigator, and but there was a menu that popped up on the left that had a menu of different library related web pages, and you could not tell that was really a browser window. I also had over 100 plugins we needed to install for all the licensed databases. The terminals ran Novell Netware on NT. I forget what software we used now, but they booted from a read only partition, and we created a new boot image when we shipped updates and someone would have to walk around with CDs and upgrade each workstation. The department that ran the public computer labs on campus had to sign off on the security before they would let me put them on the campus network.

I also had a shrinkwrapped netscape enterprise server with its server side javascript, and bought a shrinkwrapped sybase -- both at the same time I bought a Sun desktop computer. I bought all 3 at the campus bookstore and paid with a G/L code. I learned solaris, web stuff, javascript, and databases on that job. The novell netware was a directory server based on LDAP or x.509.