Kiosk vs Linutop Kiosk

Kiosk is a free, open-source PDF reader for web, desktop, mobile, and browser extensions. It renders PDFs and offers full-text search with highlighted results, page thumbnails, zoom, and light, dark, and night display modes. Its Chrome extension adds highlighting, underlining, strikethrough, drawing, shapes, and text annotations. The project says PDFs stay on the device, with no telemetry, cloud processing, or account requirement. Android works offline after installation, and the extension release notes also state that offline use is supported. The web app can run locally or be deployed through GitHub Pages as a self-hosted instance. Desktop apps can open PDFs directly and associate Kiosk with PDF files; the extension can intercept PDFs opened in Chrome. The extension supports Chrome 88+, Edge 88+, and Brave, but not Firefox or Safari. The project is released under the MIT License. Its Android release is an early alpha, and the macOS app is ad-hoc signed but not notarized, so Gatekeeper may warn on first launch.

Linutop Kiosk is Linux self-hosted software that turns a PC or Raspberry Pi into a secure internet kiosk or digital signage player. It displays photos, PDFs, videos, music, and web pages through configurable playlists sourced from a local folder, Linutop TV server, or USB key. Web kiosk settings include a starting page, website allowlist or blacklist, display options, and password locking. Lock mode restores the initial state at each restart. The software can run as a web kiosk, a signage player, or switch to signage when the kiosk is unused. Browser-based remote control works from a smartphone, tablet, or PC, and Linutop Kiosk is compatible with Linutop.tv for multi-screen management. Pro installation supports one PC or Raspberry Pi, with Ubuntu-based PC and Raspbian-based Raspberry Pi compatibility described. It includes Firefox or Chromium, LibreOffice 6, VLC 3, a PDF viewer, an on-screen keyboard, VNC, and remote management. Linutop also offers a free Linutop OS version. The Pro installation costs €79, paid once, excluding VAT.