20 June 2011, 11:50

Webconverger 8 browser-only OS with Firefox 4

UK-based developer Kai Hendry has announced the arrival of version 8 of his Webconverger browser-only operating system for web kiosks. The latest release of the Debian-derived distribution is based on the 2.6.39 Linux kernel and uses a lot of up-to-date packages from Progress Linux.

Webconverger 8 in action Version 8 of the web kiosk project updates the Adobe Flash Player plug-in to version 10.3.181.26 and includes the latest stable release of Firefox, 4.0.1 – version 7 used the 3.6.x branch of Firefox. Security has been improved "by removing terminals, though there are probably ways of downloading 32-bit terminals for execution that could be blocked".

Hendry also notes that there is a known issue with the release that causes it to boot without loading the browser. Users that come across the "strange intermittent problem" are advised to simply "try booting again".

Further information can be found in a post on the Webconverger blog and in the change log. Webconverger 8 is available to download from the project's site as a 351 MB ISO image. Instructions for burning the Webconverger ISO to a CD and copying the image to a USB flash drive are provided.

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