What’s new in Porteus Kiosk Edition 4.9.0:
- Added support for setting default zoom level in the Firefox and Chrome browsers.
- Session idle function can lock the session instead of restarting it.
- Its possible to select large mouse cursors theme for the system.
- Screen locking button can be also present in the ‘shutdown menu’ if its enabled in the kiosk config.
Porteus Kiosk Edition is a specialized distribution of Linux that provides users with a locked down computing environment, designed to be deployed on public libraries, Internet Cafes or any other business establishment that provides Internet access to their clients.
Allows users to build their own Kiosk flavors of Porteus Linux
Porteus Linux is known for booting very fast, supporting various languages, allowing users to install, remove or update system packages and applications from a custom Software Center app, as well as for its unique, dependency-resolving package manager.
The Kiosk edition is different for the other Porteus flavors, mainly because it is not distributed as a predefined ISO image. Instead users need to built their own Kiosk flavor of Porteus Linux, using the unique Kiosk Wizard (see the dedicated download page for an external link).
Getting started with Porteus Kiosk Edition
First you will need to set the passwords for the root (system administrator) and guest accounts, which are usually used when connecting to the Kiosk system through SSH. In addition, you can also set a password for the Mozilla Firefox web browser’s configuration.
Next, you must select a connection type (Wi-Fi or wired), specify the network configuration type (DHCP or manual), as well as to choose if you want to filter certain IP addresses, block specific websites, enable the firewall, and set the hostname.
Being the only web browser used in Porteus Kiosk Edition, the wizard includes a special section for it, from where users can set a homepage, configure proxy settings, restart an idle instance, set file protocols, as well as to customize the navigation bar.
Furthermore, you can choose if you want to compress data in RAM using the zRAM compression algorithm, enable or disable the Copy to RAM function, enable or disable SWAP memory, set the timezone, keyboard layout, wallpaper, mouse cursor, screen resolution, brightness and refresh rate, shutdown function, screensaver, DPMS, and a few other power settings.
Lastly, users can add some extra features to their Kiosk edition, such as Adobe Flash Player, Java, extra fonts, PXE support, SSH support, and VNC support. The entire building process should take somewhere between 10-15 minutes.
The final result will be a standard or hybrid ISO image that supports both 64-bit and 32-bit hardware platforms and will have under under 50MB in size for a default configuration. Its size can increase depending on how many extra components you add.
