Porteus

Porteus has been a great experience for me. It allowed me to do all I required and has been the easiest, fastest and most usable linux distro I've ever experienced but reading this blog has me considering that it might be time to try Slackware. In short, I am trying to assess what I will give up and what I will gain. The following questions describe the guidance I seek:

1. Will Slackware run entirely in RAM the way Porteus does?
2. Does Slackware have a conversion tool as easy to use as the porteus module translator?
3. Are there custom compiled versions of Slackware for particular Dell laptops (E6510, M4400, etc.)?
4. How much real world speed is likely to be gained on a percentage basis by a custom compile in Slackware?
5. Will I be able to do the mods described in the link above on Porteus?

1. Will Slackware run entirely in RAM the way Porteus does?
No. It is over 4Gb in size.

2. Does Slackware have a conversion tool as easy to use as the porteus module translator?
No. There is no need to convert slackware packages. They come ready to go.

3. Are there custom compiled versions of Slackware for particular Dell laptops (E6510, M4400, etc.)?
No. Using the big kernel most all options are enabled so compatibility with your DELL should be good.

4. How much real world speed is likely to be gained on a percentage basis by a custom compile in Slackware?
Very little. Moving from Porteus to slackware will certainly not gain any speed.

5. Will I be able to do the mods described in the link above on Porteus?
Yes. Anything you can mod in Porteus, you can mod in slackware, and vice versa.

What you will lose is the modularity of Porteus. The ability to boot into an 'always fresh mode' and the blistering speed that comes with a lighweight distro that boots into RAM.

You can have both distribution side to side or even within the same partition. Install slackware first and then porteus on hdd.

You will loose speed for sure and use a lot more space.

I have just been through some painful weeks on the Slackware learning curve. All your points are incredibly insightful and worth heeding. The simplicity of the porteus distro really does mask its sophistication. I ran my Porteus laptop against an identically configured one running a custom Debian kernel, the result? No meaningful difference!
I ran into a strange experience trying to boot Slackware from an SSD that Porteus appears to share. When I try to boot my Dell M4400 from the SSD with a fresh linux install on the ext4 file system with GPT partitioning, it doesn't boot. Changing my bios back and forth from UEFI to legacy doesn't help either. A Windows install on the same drive boots properly, so is this an MBR issue or something else? What bootable flags can I use to get over the missing MBR?
Just in case you are going to ask, I did check the "install bootloader" option when using Porteus install.

I have Porteus installed on a USB drive that boots on BIOS and UEFI systems. I don't recall how I did that but it was very straight forward. If I find the brokenman posting on how to do it I will link to it for you.

I did have to disable the Secure Boot option for the UEFI machine for it to boot.

yldouright, this is the posting I was referring to: http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... 38i#p33604