After a year of development, the release of the Porteus Kiosk 5.5.0 distribution kit, based on Gentoo and designed to equip autonomous Internet kiosks, demonstration stands and self-service terminals, has been published. The distribution boot image is 170 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 17th. Among other things, packages with the Linux 6.1 kernel, Chrome 108.0.5359.124, Firefox 102.9.0, sysvinit 3.06, xorg-server 21.1.7, mesa 22.3.7 have been updated.
- Implemented support for a watchdog timer that automatically restarts the system when certain checks fail. Auto-restart can be useful to keep stand-alone configurations running, such as digital signage.
- Added support for downloading components and system updates via the mirror system. Implemented automatic detection of the nearest mirror.
- Wired connection provides support for authentication (IEEE 802.1X) using the MD5 algorithm.
- Added support for exFAT storage devices.
- Xorg session start moved to tty1/VT1 console instead of VT7 to avoid flickering during boot.
- Chrome has the 'zoommtg' protocol enabled by default, without which Zoom connections using the web client would not work. By default, the setting to show the sidebar is disabled.
- Firefox does not auto-update plugins.
- The ability to monitor the battery capacity of connected clients has been added to the Porteus Kiosk Server "Premium" admin panel.
- Bluetooth enabled in Linux kernel, NVME temperature monitoring enabled, DRM driver added for Hyper-V Gen2 virtual machines.
Source: opennet.ru