14 DAY TRIAL // Today, September 5, 2016, Tomasz Jokiel of the Porteus GNU/Linux operating system has been proud to announce the release and immediate availability for download of Porteus Kiosk 4.1.0.
As its name suggest, Porteus Kiosk is a special edition of Porteus GNU/Linux designed to be deployed in kiosks and other similar machines, and version 4.1.0 is the first point release to the major 4.0 stable series announced at the end of May 2016, bringing many updated components and applications.
The biggest new features are the upgrade to the long-term supported Linux 4.4.19 kernel, as well as Mozilla Firefox 45.3.0 ESR (Extended Support Release) and Google Chrome 52.0.2743.116 web browsers. Of course, it also contains the latest security patches released upstream. However, the most important change is the availability of two new variants of Porteus Kiosk, namely Cloud and ThinClient.
"Variant Cloud provides an easy access to the web applications and services like Google Apps for Education, Jolicloud, OwnCloud or Dropbox, is less restrictive than kiosk and offers functionalities which can't be implemented easily in standard kiosk image," reads the announcement. "Variant ThinClient contains applications supporting most popular connectivity protocols like: Citrix, RDP, NX, Spice, VNC and SSH."
Google is now the default search engine for Porteus Kiosk
Among other noteworthy changes implemented in Porteus Kiosk 4.1.0, we can mention the ability to host the kiosk's configuration files directly on Porteus Kiosk Server without having to rely on third-party file hosting services, better "managed bookmarks" functionality with support for defining bookmark names, and the ability to set a custom persistence level for the guest's "Home" folder.
Moreover, Google makes a comeback as the default search engine, replacing DuckDuckGo, which is still available if you want more privacy when searching the Web, the built-in password manager was updated to support remembering of credentials for websites, it's now possible to tweak the kernel if you want to optimize the system for your hardware, and control the slide duration for the screensaver slideshow.
Last but not least, the DMPS functionality will no longer turn off the screen after 10 minutes of inactivity by default, now allowing you to set a specific time, a boot splash is now enabled for the post installation ISO, and there's a new option that helps preserve the persistent partition. Download Porteus Kiosk 4.1.0 right now via our website and check out the release notes for more details.