LPS-Public For Linux

LPS (Lightweight Portable Security) is an open source distribution of Linux that provides users with a thin client designed to run directly from a portable device and to not expose your private data and credentials to anyone.

It has been created by the US Air Force Research Laboratory, as part of their Software Protection Initiative project, and can be used for PIV (Personal Identity Verification) or CAC (Common Access Card) restricted government websites.

The operating system is distributed as three Live CDs, LPS Public, LPS Public Deluxe, and LPS Remote Access. They can be easily deployed to USB flash drives using the UNetbootin application, or written to blank CDs using any CD/DVD burning software.

The first two are available to the general public, but the third one has been specifically designed to be used by the United States Department of Defense (DoD), as well as various other US federal government agencies.

While LPS Public is the smaller one and includes a minimal set of packages, LPS Public Deluxe comes with a bigger collection of applications and utilities. They are both engineered to allow productive use of the Internet.

When booting the Live CDs, users will be able to press the CTRL+C key combination in order to access various startup options, such as an alternate boot mode, a basic video mode, as well as the ability to boot an existing operating system from the first disk drive.

Default applications include the OpenOffice office suite, Mozilla Firefox web browser, a PDF viewer, as well as various basic utilities. An encryption utility for decrypting and encrypting personal files is also installed by default. It can automatically detect smart cards, and supports remote desktop connectivity.

Overall, LPS (Lightweight Portable Security) is a very secure Linux-based operating system, in the way that it will never write or install any data on your computer’s disk drive, and it’ll never expose your private files.