Porteus Kiosk variant "Cloud"


Porteus Kiosk variant "Cloud" is built on top of the standard Porteus Kiosk operating system. It focuses on providing easy access to the web applications and services like Google Apps for Education, Jolicloud, OwnCloud or Dropbox.

Its intended mainly for educational environments although with some changes it could be used anywhere else.

Purpose:

Our goal is to deliver an operating system which is less restrictive than the default kiosk installation so students, partons and users could do more with it. All viable system functions can be controlled by the teacher/administrator, users may be still limited in their activities if it's necessary.


Why use Porteus Kiosk variant "Cloud" and not any other operating system offering similar functionality?

There are many areas where our system has strong points:

  • It's based on open source components.
  • It's small and copied entirely to RAM offering unmatched speed and stability.
  • It's locked down tightly as it inherits most of the default system settings from the parent Kiosk project.
  • Is flexible and can be configured in great details with a friendly first run wizard.
  • Supports remote management making large deployments easy to maintain.
  • Can be monitored and managed through the Porteus Kiosk Server.
  • Automatic updates are enabled by default.

  • What are the main differences with parent Porteus Kiosk system?

  • Private mode is disabled for the browser so users can always sign into their Google account.
  • It's not possible to control browser UI layout (disable/hide navigation bar, disable address bar), disable input devices or hide mouse cursor as these settings make no use for the "Cloud" type of the system.
  • Other API parameters are available so you can configure the browser/system features as you like.
  • Downloads are unblocked so users are allowed to fetch files from the network and store them locally.
  • File protocol is enabled as a requirement for displaying "local storage" folders in the browser window.
  • Removable devices (usb sticks, flash cards) are mounted with write access. Users must click on the "eject removable device" button in order to unmount them safely.
  • Bottom panel is present by default providing access to launchers, task manager, volume control, battery applet, clock/calendar and exit session button.

  • Please download Porteus Kiosk variant "Cloud" from your Customer Panel and provide feedback which is necessary to improve this offering.

    Sample screenshots: