Includes Linux kernel 4.14.13 and Mozilla Firefox 52.5.3 ESR

Jan 15, 2018 18:24 GMT  ·  By

Porteus Linux developer Tomasz Jokiel announced today the release and immediate availability for download of the Porteus Kiosk 4.6.0 Gentoo Linux-based operating system.

Including all the upstream security and software updates from the Gentoo Linux repositories as of January 14, 2018, Porteus Kiosk 4.6.0 is powered by the Linux 4.14.13 kernel and includes the Mozilla Firefox 52.5.3 ESR and Google Chrome 63.0.3239.132 web browsers, protecting users against the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities that have been publicly disclosed earlier this month.

"This release fixes Meltdown attack and partially mitigates Spectre vulnerability through updated CPU microcode and on the application level," said Tomasz Jokiel. "Firefox 52 ESR browser is less affected by Spectre while Chrome 63 needs experimental Site Isolation security feature enabled. More patches to be merged as Meltdown/Spectre bugs are still a work in progress."

Here's what's new in Porteus Kiosk 4.6

New features of the Porteus Kiosk 4.6 release include Intel and AMD microcodes compiled directly into the Linux kernel to be loaded early in the boot process, support for real-time monitoring of the client resources in Porteus Kiosk Server, as well as the ability for the VNC daemon to display a pop-up window before establishing a connection and prompt the kiosk user to allow or reject it.

Also, the first run wizard is now capable of running a virtual keyboard to aid users in configuring the system for touchscreens or when there's no physical keyboard present, full persistence support is now provided for NVME devices, the Intel i915 OpenGL Mesa 3D graphics driver was switched from Gallium to the classic version as it caused Firefox tabs to crash on Intel Gen3 Alviso GPUs.

Last but not least, a notification is now displayed on kiosk systems whose battery capacity reaches 10%, along with a pop-up window, which the kiosk user must click to disappear. There are also several other minor bug fixes and improvements implemented in this release, along with up-to-date components from the upstream Gentoo Linux software repositories.

The developer recommends all Porteus Kiosk users to consider enabling the kiosk's automatic updates service to receive all the latest bug fixes and patches as soon as they become available in the operating system's repositories. For new deployments, you can download the Porteus Kiosk 4.6.0 installation image right now through our website.