Introduction
A new ThinLinc release is finally here, version 4.5.0. It includes more than 50 enhancements. The most prominent features are:
- Better audio handling for disconnect clients, or clients without audio support.
- Forced re-authentication for browsers that "restore" closed pages.
- Solaris is no longer a supported client or server platform.
- Tools for integrating Linux with Novell servers are no longer included.
Changes in This Release
In the list below, the bug number is given in parentheses. For more information, visit https://www.cendio.com/bugzilla/.
Server
ThinLinc works on most modern Linux distributions. We recommend that you deploy ThinLinc on one of these tested platforms:
- Red Hat (R) Enterprise Linux Server 7
- SUSE (R) Linux Enterprise Server 12
- Ubuntu Desktop (R) 14.04 (64-bit)
Please note that ThinLinc is supported on any platform that fulfills our documented requirements. This includes Oracle (R) Linux 7, Linux Mint (R) 17, and Debian (R) 7.0.
Automatic installation of dependencies is now working again on Red Hat (R) Enterprise Linux Server 6. (5514)
Multiple problems have been fixed that could cause the session to terminate unexpectedly. (5492, 5571)
The session will now longer be resized to 1920x1200 on login with modern desktop environments such as Gnome or KDE. (5600)
Several security issues have been fixed in the X server's font parser. An attack requires authenticated access to the X server so the security implications are in most cases mild to non-existent. Users are still encouraged to upgrade to the latest version of ThinLinc. (5602)
Removal of old session directories is now handled slightly different in order to avoid certain problems. Directories belonging to terminated sessions will have a longer name as a result of this change. (4699)
The session database is now written to disk in a more efficient manner in order to avoid overloading vsmserver when many sessions terminate at the same time. (5451)
General
- Oracle Solaris (R) is no longer a supported platform for neither the server nor the client. Previous versions of ThinLinc will continue to be supported on this platform up until three years after their release. Users are however encouraged to migrate to Linux and current versions of ThinLinc as soon as possible. (3614)
Native Client
- It is now possible to minimize the native client directly from the context menu. (3955)
- A recent update to OS X' Gatekeeper caused it to fail to verify the ThinLinc client's signature. The client has now been adjusted to be compatible with these new requirements. (5625)
- Gatekeeper in OS X 10.11 will now only ask once to trust the ThinLinc client after downloading it instead of every time it is opened. Older versions of OS X already behaved the correct way. (5690)
- The native client now uses less CPU on OS X, giving some improvement to performance when CPU power has been the limiting factor. (5570)
- Global configuration is now supported on OS X, allowing system wide settings to be deployed for the client. (5659)
HTML5 Client
- The HTML5 client now has basic support for multiple sessions. (5455)
- Many browsers retain complete information about a page even after the tab or the entire browser has closed. This can allow a ThinLinc session to be resumed without the user logging in again. The HTML5 client has now been changed to force users to log in again under these circumstances. (5607)
- Passwords of certain lengths caused authentication to stall and eventually fail. This issue has now been fixed and all passwords should be accepted. (5654)
- Panning the screen no longer causes the screen contents to become blurry and unclear. (5515)
Audio Redirection
- Parts of the audio redirection are now handled server side, in each session. This avoids problems with programs such as Metacity that misbehave when no client is connected, or when audio redirection is disabled in the client. (4194)
Novell Integration
- ThinLinc no longer includes tools for integrating with a Novell infrastructure. Users should rely on the tools provided by their Linux distribution, or on tools provided by Novell. (4627)
Corrected Issues
ThinLinc has also been enhanced in many other ways. The complete list of corrected issues is:
3614, 3955, 4194, 4339, 4410, 4413, 4414, 4627, 4699, 4793, 4960, 5110, 5235, 5420, 5430, 5451, 5455, 5456, 5468, 5470, 5492, 5502, 5507, 5514, 5515, 5530, 5531, 5539, 5545, 5559, 5563, 5569, 5570, 5571, 5578, 5582, 5583, 5589, 5600, 5602, 5603, 5607, 5608, 5612, 5620, 5625, 5626, 5627, 5632, 5654, 5655, 5656, 5659, 5690