Porteus Kiosk 4.7 releases, lightweight Linux operating system

Porteus Kiosk is a lightweight Linux operating system which has been restricted to allow only use of the web browser. Furthermore, the browser has been locked down to prevent users from tampering with settings or downloading and installing software. When the kiosk boots it automatically opens Firefox or Google Chrome browser to your chosen home page. The history is not kept, no passwords are saved, and many menu items have been disabled for total security. When the browser is restarted, all caches are cleared and it reopens automatically with a clean session to ensure no trace of history is left.

Porteus Kiosk is a full operating system which replaces Windows or any other OS during installation. While evaluating our product we recommend the installation on removable devices or in a virtual environment. When our system goes into production we strongly advise to install it on a PC hard drive.

Porteus Kiosk 4.7.0 released, Porteus Kiosk is a lightweight Linux operating system, which is based on Gentoo Linux.

Major software upgrades in this release include: Linux kernel 4.14.50, Mozilla Firefox 52.8.1 ESR and Google Chrome 66.0.3359.181. Packages from the userland are upgraded to portage snapshot tagged on 20180616: link.

Latest kiosk release brings more work on mitigitng Spectre vulnerabilities through updated CPU microcode and kernel patches. Newly discovered “Spectre Next Generation” vulnerabilities require updated microcode from Intel which is not available yet. Please consider enabling automatic updates service for your kiosks to receive latest fixes and patches as soon as they become available.

Its possible to explicitly set the shutdown options which should be present in the kiosk shutdown menu. You can allow the users to e.g. reboot the kiosk or restart the session but they wont be able to shutdown the PC fully.

Added support for refreshing browser webpage with defined time interval. This is useful for digital signage purposes.

Screen rotation function has been split from more complex ‘screen_settings’ parameter. Handy if you want to just rotate the screen on different kiosk setups and want to avoid providing other screen attributes like vide output name, screen resolution, refresh rate or position.

Enabled “DRI3” and “TearFree” features on Intel DDX driver by default which should result in a smooth video playback and scrolling on rotated screens.

USB devices (e.g. smart cards) are redirected to Citrix session by default.

‘Wake On LAN’ function should also wake the kiosks which are in different subnets than Porteus Kiosk Server.

Implemented ‘Send notification’ action in the server’s Administration Panel so its possible to send a message to multiple clients.

Added ‘History’ function to the ‘Send custom command’ action in the Administration Panel so its possible to easily rerun previously executed commands.

Other bugfixes and improvements.