Laptops :: Setup a laptop as a "picture frame"

Hello,

I'm new to the forum and don't know wether this is the right place, i appologise if it is not.

I am trying to set up an old laptop to work as a "picture frame" like the ones Philips are selling.
The requirements are the following:
1) No input needed at all - boot up to an OS (DSL) without user interaction and
2) Display pictures (probably from a screensaver) from a local folder that is accessible over the internet so I can add new pictures. Alternatively it could connect to a ftp or http server and display pictures from a certain directory.
3) Shutdown in the afternoon every day and boot up in the morning to save energy. It does come with a BIOS that is capable of booting at predefined times every day, so it basically has to shutdown at a certain time, probably only needs the right command to do this, I hope you can help me out on this one easily.

The purpose is to set up the laptop in a case-mod for my parents, and me and my brother want to be able to somehow display pictures we have taken. So we either want to connect to DSL via ssh or DSL has to load the pictures it displays from an internet source that we can change the pictures on. The laptop will have constant access to the internet of course. We don't yet know wether it will have a hdd, so another question would be how to create a boot-image of dsl with all the settings needed to work as described above.

I thank you in advance

Lennert

Update:

The HDD will stay installed, and so it will be easier to configure (this is actually due to the fact that the laptop won't boot up at all if the hdd is not installed).

So I am now looking for the settings to

boot up to DSL without login-screen
mount a ftp server
run a screensaver that displays pictures from the mounted directory
shutdown at let's say 23:oo

Please help me out on this one!

Lennert

1. install it (if you are also referring to the boot screen, you can install lilo/grub with no prompt)
2. what do you mean by this? (don't think you typically mount ftp sites)
3. xscreensaver (or see other picture show forum threads for alternatives)
4. cron

Thanks a lot!

I thought for the screensaver to be able to display the pictures of the ftp server it needs a mount point? I will install xscreensaver and see what options it gives me.

I think I can get this done now pretty easily!

Lennert

Well theres probably a non-standard tool that you could virtually 'mount' ftp sites on.

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