Porteus Kiosk 5.4.0 distribution kit, based on Gentoo and intended for equipping stand-alone Internet kiosks, demonstration stands and self-service terminals, has been released. The distribution boot image is 140 MB (x86_64).
The base assembly includes only the minimum set of components necessary to run a web browser (Firefox and Chrome are supported), which is curtailed in its capabilities to prevent unwanted activity on the system (for example, settings are not allowed to be changed, download / installation of applications is blocked, only access to selected pages). Additionally, specialized Cloud builds are offered for comfortable work with web applications (Google Apps, Jolicloud, OwnCloud, Dropbox) and ThinClient for working as a thin client (Citrix, RDP, NX, VNC and SSH) and Server for managing a network of kiosks.
The configuration is carried out through a special wizard, which is combined with the installer and allows you to prepare a customized version of the distribution kit for placement on a USB Flash or hard drive. For example, you can set a default page, define a whitelist of allowed sites, set a password for guest login, define an inactivity timeout for logging out, change the background image, customize the browser skin, add additional plugins, enable wireless network support, configure keyboard layout switching, etc. .d.
During boot, system components are verified by checksums, and the system image is mounted in read-only mode. Updates are installed automatically using the mechanism of formation and atomic replacement of the entire system image. It is possible to centrally remotely configure a group of typical Internet kiosks with configuration download over the network. Due to its small size, by default, the distribution is loaded entirely into RAM, which allows you to noticeably increase the speed of work.
In the new release:
- The software versions are synchronized with the Gentoo repository as of March 20th. Including updated packages with Linux kernel 5.15.28, Chrome 98.0.4758.102 and Firefox 91.7.1.
- Added support for importing certificates in DER format via a call with the 'import_certificates=' parameter.
- Enabled hardware accelerated video decoding when displaying video and web pages during screen lock.
- Implemented the ability to dynamically generate an external configuration that can be loaded by passing the parameter "kiosk_config=URL", for example 'kiosk_config=https://domain.com/kiosk-config.php?device=nuc&sound=0.3'.
- Firefox has the OpenH264 plugin enabled by default, which can be useful when streaming video using WebRTC.
- Added 'cec-client' utility to manage screen connections via HDMI port.
- The number of network connections to Porteus Kiosk Server established at client startup has been reduced from 5 to 3, which reduced the load on the server when running multiple clients at the same time.
- It is forbidden to use keyboard shortcuts that are blocked by default in the system to switch the keyboard layout.
- Changed the order in which spare graphics drivers are loaded in the event of an X server startup failure: modesetting, fbdev, and vesa.
Source: opennet.ru