Webconverger 5.7 playing back HTML5 video

5.7 features a lenny backported Firefox 3.5 build, finally!

Overall I would consider this release as experimental.

There is a couple new known bugs introduced with Firefox 3.5. Namely you can now non-persistently change configuration settings in the about: URL and browse the local filesystem.

This introduces possibly some security issues and of course I would rather have the kiosk more locked down that this current state. Sadly Firefox is very difficult to modify into a sane kiosk deployment. I've written a kiosk extension myself and trying to implement NsIContentPolicy to control these local URLs and file downloads is proving to be beyond my ability.

If you're a developer familiar with Firefox, please take a look at my notes on the kiosk wiki page.

Debian installer is disabled

Yes, I've disabled the debian installer again. I am finding it far too complex and I am tempted to to write my own simpler installer based on dd.

If you are tech-savvy you can simply install Webconverger to your hard drive by:

wget http://download.webconverger.org/webc-5.7.img
sudo dd if=webc-5.7.img of=/dev/sda

This will replace the contents of your first hard drive (typically) with Webconverger.

What I do in my deployments is use a "debug version" of Webconverger to perform these installs.

5.7 release notes

I've enabled FF3.5's Private Browsing feature by default. Strictly speaking since the ~/.mozilla directory is purged between sessions, this enabling this "private browsing" feature is totally unneccessary and probably introduces problems. However I'm thinking "security in layers" and "lets give it go".

Spelling does not seem to work. Something is wrong with the myspell dictionaries and FF3.5 backport. I need to fix this. On the plus side, you might find Webconverger quicker. :)

If you notice a SPLASHY ERROR on bootup, do not be alarmed, this is normal. I am looking to replace the horrible software used to simply not have linux print copious lines out to the screen, with another crazy like the 28k SLOC Project Plymouth. Ok, maybe not. :) If only linux quiet worked.

Download mirrors

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