The OS is now powered by Linux kernel 4.4.11 LTS

May 31, 2016 00:35 GMT  ·  By

Porteus Solutions' Tomasz Jokiel announced on May 30, 2016, the release of the final Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0 Web Kiosk operating system based on the latest GNU/Linux technologies and open-source software.

Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0 comes three months after the release of the last maintenance build in the Porteus Kiosk 3.x series, introducing numerous new features and improvements. But first, let's take a quick look under the hood, as the OS is now powered by Linux kernel 4.4.11 LTS (Long Term Support), and it's based on the Mozilla Firefox 45.1.1 ESR and Google Chrome 50.0.2661.102 web browsers.

Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0 is the first stable build of the Linux Web Kiosk OS to drop support for 32-bit Google Chrome packages. "Google dropped support for 32-bit Chrome browser, and we have decided to follow this path. Porteus Kiosk version 4.0.0 has kernel and userland compiled for x86_64 architecture exclusively. Current and future releases of our system won't support 32bit PCs anymore," says Tomasz Jokiel.

Here's what's new in Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0

Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0 introduces a new option in the configuration panel to allow users to set a capture device as the default microphone for the Web Kiosk system. Furthermore, it also boasts an option to let you download a screensaver slideshow archive from a given URL every few minutes (user-defined setting), which might be very useful to those who want to update the slideshow often without rebooting their infrastructure.

Moreover, the Import Certificates feature has been updated with support for installing Citrix Receiver certificates, and it's also possible now to control it remotely by using the "import_certificates" parameter. The Welcome wizard has been updated as well in Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0 with a new "Launch Network Wizard" applet, thus allowing users to repeat the initial configuration of a network.

Among other interesting features implemented in Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0, which you can download right now from our website as a standalone ISO-hybrid image, is support for testing capture devices before installing the Web Kiosk OS. Then, also worth mentioning are the ability to quickly find a mounted removal media, support for deploying Porteus Kiosk on SD cards, and the removal of the horizontal overscroll feature in Google Chrome due to privacy issues. For more details, the full changelog is available below.

Porteus Kiosk 4.0.0 Changelog