After a year of development, the release of the Porteus Kiosk 5.5.0 distribution has been published, based on Gentoo and designed to equip standalone internet kiosks, demonstration stands, and self-service terminals. The bootable image of the distribution is 170 MB (x86_64).
The basic build includes only the minimum set of components necessary to run a web browser (Firefox and Chrome are supported), which has limitations to prevent undesirable activities in the system (for example, changing settings is not permitted, downloading/installing applications is blocked, and access is limited to selected pages). Additionally, specialized Cloud builds are offered for comfortable web application usage (Google Apps, Jolicloud, OwnCloud, Dropbox) and a ThinClient for functioning as a thin client (Citrix, RDP, NX, VNC, and SSH) and Server for managing the network of kiosks.
Configuration is done through a special wizard that merges with the installer and allows for the preparation of a customized version of the distribution for placement on a USB flash drive or hard disk. For example, you can set a default homepage, define a whitelist of allowed websites, set a password for guest access, determine an inactivity timeout to end the session, change the background image, customize browser appearance, add additional plugins, enable wireless network support, configure keyboard layout switching, etc.
During boot, system components are verified against checksums, and the system image is mounted in read-only mode. Updates are automatically installed using the mechanism for creating and atomically replacing the entire system image. Centralized remote configuration of a group of standard internet kiosks is possible with network-based configuration loading. Due to its small size, by default, the distribution loads entirely into RAM, significantly increasing operational speed.
In the new release:
- Software versions have been synchronized with the Gentoo repository as of March 17. Among other updates, the packages have been updated to Linux kernel 6.1, Chrome 108.0.5359.124, Firefox 102.9.0, sysvinit 3.06, xorg-server 21.1.7, and mesa 22.3.7.
- Support for a watchdog timer has been implemented, providing automatic system reboot upon failure of certain checks. Automatic reboot may be useful for maintaining the operation of isolated configurations, such as digital signage.
- Support for loading components and system updates via a mirror system has been added. Automatic detection of the nearest mirror is now implemented.
- Wired connections support authentication (IEEE 802.1X) using the MD5 algorithm.
- Support for storage devices with the exFAT file system has been added.
- The Xorg session startup has been switched to console tty1/VT1 instead of VT7 to eliminate flickering during boot.
- Support for the 'zoommtg' protocol is enabled by default in Chrome, which was required for establishing connections to Zoom using the web client. The setting for showing the sidebar is disabled by default.
- Auto-updating of plugins has been disabled in Firefox.
- The ‘Premium’ administrator panel of Porteus Kiosk Server has added the ability to monitor the battery capacity of connected clients.
- Bluetooth support has been added to the Linux kernel, NVME temperature monitoring has been activated, and a DRM driver has been included for of virtual machines Hyper-V Gen2.
Source: opennet.ru
