What would you use if Porteus was not available?

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fulalas
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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#16 by fulalas » 31 May 2017, 02:38

hypomania wrote:Slitaz
On the other hand, this distro has my respect! I've never heard about it before, but I've just given it a try and I think it's amazing!

Slitaz october 2016 x64:
+The ISO has just 51 mb;
+Boot in 18s;
+After boot: 94 mb RAM! Amazing!!!
+Although it uses OpenBox as the default DE, it's very well organized;
+Comes with a simple browser (Midori) that simply works;
+Common shortcuts are in place, even the always-forgotten WIN+D to show desktop;
+Comes with a regular multimedia package;
-No sound inside VirtualBox -- I'll try in a real machine soon;
-Official builds are all x86, so I'm kind of experimenting x64 here;
-Kernel version is old: 3.16.36;

EDITED: I've just tried on a real machine with the last rolling x64 build from May 2017. My impressions have changed a little bit. Because of the old kernel (still 3.x), neither my wifi card nor my sound card are recognized. And although the ISO has now just 46 mb (really impressive!), the after boot consumes 176 mb RAM, which is still nice, but very similar to Porteus + LXQt (204 mb), that, as we know, is more robust and powerful. I guess that putting a decent multimedia package would increase Slitaz ISO space a lot and maybe it wouldn't be as light as it's now. I'm yet to see a lighter distro than Porteus that is as powerful as it is :)
Last edited by fulalas on 03 Jun 2017, 10:12, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#17 by Tonio » 31 May 2017, 03:30

Have you checked out tiny core?
Tiny core is smaller than slitaz. Theres also one called minimal linux live which provides scripts to create it. It is a very small linux live. Check these out if you have a chance. I forgot also about Slackel based on Salix and Slackware. Big, but updated to Slackware current, uses slternare live scripts besides linux live from Tomas Matejicek and custom scripts that other distros use no aufs. The good thing, there are plenty to chose from, and one can use whichever :)

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#18 by fulalas » 31 May 2017, 04:19

Tonio wrote:Have you checked out tiny core?
Tiny core is smaller than slitaz. Theres also one called minimal linux live which provides scripts to create it. It is a very small linux live. Check these out if you have a chance. I forgot also about Slackel based on Salix and Slackware. Big, but updated to Slackware current, uses slternare live scripts besides linux live from Tomas Matejicek and custom scripts that other distros use no aufs. The good thing, there are plenty to chose from, and one can use whichever :)
Yep. I'm aware of TinyCore. I tried a few years ago, but I think it's minimalist to a point it lacks useful functionalities. And when you want to install a simple browser or player, you have to download so many dependencies that the system grows to a very common size. Also, the default DE is terrible, hahaha! I'll give it a try again soon. :)

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#19 by fulalas » 31 May 2017, 07:08

TinyCore Plus 8.0:
+ISO has 119 mb (there's a 25 mb version, but it lacks wifi support);
+Boot in 4s -- shocking!
+After boot: 63 mb RAM -- fantastic!
+-This Plus version comes with lots of 'kind of DEs' to choose. But in the end they're all basic the same in terms of looking and usability;
+As a minimalist OS, its file structure is very well organized to a point you can't spot an orphan file like we have in basically all distros;
-DE doesn't run at the display native resolution, and the utility to change resolution doesn't work;
-DE has terrible usability;
-Doesn't come with any software, except a really simple text editor and an app manager. In lacks even a simple file manager;
-App manager is old as hell. You can't find most of the current softwares, like Opera, Pidgin, Qmmp, SMPlayer, Mpv, etc;
-Any software you install will have to download lots of dependencies since the system comes with the absolute minimum to boot. So in the end this minimalist approach is kind of an illusion;
-Although it's easy to install a new software (when you can find it...), it's not clear how can we uninstall it;
-No audio;
-Youtube doesn't work in Chromium;
-In general seems very experimental, making it hard to believe that it can be used as a daily OS;

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#20 by Evan » 31 May 2017, 07:36

BrokenMan has done a great job with Porteus of finding the right balance between stripping down the size and still being functional............

One of the biggest annoyances with puppylinux apart from the silly themes was finding out when things didn't work correctly it was because some standard function had been removed.

On one of the projects i can't remember if it was Nvidia acceleration or cuda that was giving errors but instead of repairing it so people could run steam and such they just hacked out the Nvidia binaries that were causing the problem. :crazy:

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#21 by fulalas » 31 May 2017, 09:26

Evan wrote:BrokenMan has done a great job with Porteus of finding the right balance between stripping down the size and still being functional
Precisely! It's made to be used as a serious daily system but without this useless bloatware philosophy, like Ubuntu-like distros. I really can't understand a distro with more than 600 mb (Ubuntu is now 1.5 gb!) that comes with as many apps as Porteus. :unknown:
Evan wrote:One of the biggest annoyances with puppylinux apart from the silly themes was finding out when things didn't work correctly it was because some standard function had been removed.
One of the most frustrating things is when you click on something and nothing happens or it throws a random error. I found Puppy very messy and unpolished. Indeed, most Linux distros are very unpolished. Also, most of the time websites and journalists make a terrible service when writing about them, which doesn't help new users. Take a look at this Porteus review for example, where the guy couldn't even understand the whole point of modules:

Code: Select all

The strangest part of Porteus, however, has to be the way it handles software installs. Like most Linux distros, it uses a package manager to download and install applications, but you then have the option of compressing all the download files into a Porteus “module”. If you then want this application to be available when you reboot, you need to copy the module into the /porteus/modules directory on your USB stick. 
And this other one:

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The QMMP wikipedia page says that QMMP has an intuitive easy to use interface. Really? I'm quite an intelligent guy but I can't find one single menu option that allows you to choose how to open a track or import music.
Qmmp is a Winamp-like audio player. If you don't have this culture (it seems the 90's is now retro), you need to just observe the interface since all buttons are made using the same old pattern of all other audio players...

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The default video player is SMPlayer which is ok and works well enough for playing videos.
SMPlayer isn't a video player. It's a front-end for actual players, like Mpv and MPlayer, and these players depend totally on FFMpeg libs.

Code: Select all

I navigated to the folder where the tarballs were downloaded [from USM] and upon right clicking them there is an option to install them. (Which I guess means extract them).
Porteus works with modules, so you need to read a little bit more before using it and, especially, before writing about it.

Besides that, I think Porteus comes fully working out of the box. The only thing new users probably miss is a default browser. The old website tool that built custom ISOs was a must!

But, hey, we're now kind of curious waiting for Porteus 4, right? :)

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#22 by Evan » 31 May 2017, 09:53

fulalas wrote:But, hey, we're now kind of curious waiting for Porteus 4, right? :)
It's annoying that i have to keep at least 1 copy of Windows for my Brother to play his Call of Duty games. :roll:

I keep meaning to look into ' Windows to Go ' to see if gaming via USB is workable.

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#23 by francois » 31 May 2017, 20:15

debian dog jessie (originally porteus kernel based):
https://debiandog.github.io/doglinux/zz ... essie.html
Porteus based with debian package manager.
nemesis:
viewtopic.php?f=137&t=5066
Manjaro based with pman wrapper to convert packages to modules.
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#24 by Evan » 01 Jun 2017, 00:39

francois wrote:debian dog jessie
:shock:

<insert> Not sure if serious jpg. :D

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#25 by beny » 01 Jun 2017, 10:19

arch on sd or slackware too,work well, no problem with hardware if you use mesa or noveau,no problem with store changes, small size=small system, we can use kiosk version, well in my town no internet cafe so no kiosk

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#26 by Evan » 01 Jun 2017, 12:40

Doesn't Arch use SystemD and Manjaro is without it?

Don't know if it will hold true in future but i've seen alot of posts claiming Devuan is a waste of time with compatibility problems with Debians repository that will only get worse as more applications become Systemd and snap friendly.

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#27 by francois » 01 Jun 2017, 18:15

Yes, it uses systemd. But openrc is possible. Nemesis built by brokenman is manjaro based with openrc.
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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#28 by Tonio » 03 Jun 2017, 01:58

pmppinho wrote: I have porteus on 8Gb usb 3.1 taking just under 1Gb of space with Gimp and LibreOffice in it.
A system in void linux with Gimp and LibreOffice takes 3.9Gb of space.

So, again Porteus wins!
Great writeup on installation of voidlinux to usb drive.
NOTE: I really like porteus, but comparing installation of porteus vs voidlinux is unfair. Why? Porteus uses compression, its size will be smaller and voidlinux is a regular install without compression. What would be nice would be to apply the same compression technique; ie, use xzm compression/aufs on void; then one can see why it would be smaller. They have a mklivecd but I have no experience with it. I have a musl installation and I miss some programs like openjdk.

I could not get the openjdk and icedtea-web packages to work on slackware-current, till they moved to firefox-esr. My guess that I would need to do this on porteus to get it working as well. Slackel, Salix have openjre and icedtea-web plugins, but their isos are bigger, also alienbob's liveslack does the job, but only with newer firefox-esr.
Sorry for drifting into these details, but I have to use the java for my job.

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#29 by Tonio » 03 Jun 2017, 02:12

francois wrote:Yes, it uses systemd. But openrc is possible. Nemesis built by brokenman is manjaro based with openrc.
Nemesis uses systemd? I believed that there might be two variants, one with and one without. What would be nice is if power users can test the runit init program and compare it to openrc, vs sysvinit and seen which works best. Sadly the desktops may require the big dependecies and bring in the systemd suite to just run. Voidlinux runs fast, but it would be somewhat different if run as livecd or livedvd. I see that TrueOS a freebsd current uses openrc vs standard bsd init. It works faster according to some folks, but the init on a big dvd or usbdisk should just workfine, but who knows?

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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Post#30 by francois » 03 Jun 2017, 03:32

Manjaro and arch linux are systemd operated, nemesis is openrc. Nemesis at the begining was systemd with arch linux, brokenman wanted to have a look at systemd. He then moved to manjaro and openrc to build nemesis.

He might come in and comment on his experience. This would be nice.
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