Starting out in Porteus (A Guide)

Post here if you are a new Porteus member and you're looking for some help.
Bogomips
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Starting out in Porteus (A Guide)

Post#1 by Bogomips » 10 Jan 2017, 19:26

Quick Start Guide assumes now at the point where Porteus set up on some sort of medium, and that one has succeeded in booting into a GUI, and noticed there is no browser entry in the menu.
  1. Browsers are availableDownloaded module needs to be placed in the porteus/modules folder, so that upon start up module will be activated and browser becomes available for use.
    • Download Mirror Site Thereafter it suffices to just open a terminal and enter fastest-mirror
      • Type fast, hit Tab(completion), press Enter.
      • Paste URL into Browser
      Worries about where to find Download Link banished! :)
      • Text Processing libreoffice/wps-office from mirror modules directory. Download and place in porteus/modules folder.
        • CLI Where have all the man pages gone? And the answer is... into a module. It's now a matter of choice. To opt for man pages, download man-files module from mirror modules directory and place in porteus/modules folder.
          • Immediate Usage Module can be activated for immediate use by clicking on it from the file manager. (Modules placed in the porteus/modules folder during current session will be activated at next boot.)
            • More Applications Menu > System > Unified Slackware Package Manager (USM)
              N.B. Module created needs to be moved from /tmp to either the porteus/modules folder or another non-volatile folder. More details here: [SOLVED] Modules deactivate after every reboot
            Enjoy!
            Last edited by Bogomips on 24 Apr 2017, 14:06, edited 3 times in total.
            Linux porteus 4.4.0-porteus #3 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jan 23 07:01:55 UTC 2016 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) 140 Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
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            Jack
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            Re: Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#2 by Jack » 10 Jan 2017, 20:33

            That's nice but there is other desktop where the *.xzm for them? Like I use Mate.
            I just like Slackware because I think it teach you about Linux to build packages where Ubuntu is like Windows you just install programs you want.

            Bogomips
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            Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#3 by Bogomips » 10 Jan 2017, 20:41

            Jack wrote:That's nice but there is other desktop where the *.xzm for them? Like I use Mate.
            To clear up any confusion. One can get for any desktop: chromium/firefox/opera/palemoon. Now if one has KDE5 desktop there is also the choice of Konqueror and the download is only 3.2 MB.


            Addendum
            Linux porteus 4.4.0-porteus #3 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jan 23 07:01:55 UTC 2016 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) 140 Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
            NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) MemTotal: 901760 kB MemFree: 66752 kB

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            francois
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            Re: Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#4 by francois » 08 Feb 2017, 14:17

            Updated the first post with permission of the author. :)
            Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

            Bogomips
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            Re: Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#5 by Bogomips » 10 Feb 2017, 23:50

            ^ Please put in a request for appropriate driver, in Modules Request section for your architecture.

            P.S. Despite low spec h/w have no problem playing embedded video in Cinnamon (Nouveau driver), but then have a helluva lot of script generating URLs blocked. :twisted: Just now had jerky movement in kde (nvidia driver) and this always seems to indicate cpu at 100% load. Had to close some tabs, and in others kill Javascript until cpu around 40%, when normal motion was able to resume.
            Linux porteus 4.4.0-porteus #3 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jan 23 07:01:55 UTC 2016 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) 140 Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
            NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) MemTotal: 901760 kB MemFree: 66752 kB

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            Re: Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#6 by francois » 28 Apr 2017, 12:09

            This post was very popular.
            Bumping. :wink:
            Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

            Bootlegger_Bob
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            Re: Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#7 by Bootlegger_Bob » 17 May 2017, 01:51

            I'm on Porteus Cinnamon for the first time (BunsenLabs before) but am in general totally new to linux.
            Found USM fast, updated and wrote "firefox" in the search. Found the light version, downloaded and moved to modules folder. Starts up every time I boot. Apart from that I haven't made a lot of changes to the system (added some cheatcodes to porteus.cfg, kmap, timezone but that's about it)
            Read this post after finding all I needed on the forum and I must say there're a lot of people willing to help you (the reader) out if you just look around before you ask.

            Props to the author of this topic.

            - Bob

            anajames
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            Re: Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#8 by anajames » 20 Jun 2017, 13:58

            Me to totally new to linux.
            USM is definitely fast could not ask enough.

            yldouright
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            Starting out in Porteus 3.2.2 (A Guide)

            Post#9 by yldouright » 19 Mar 2018, 22:25

            Something I haven't noted in any install guide is a pre-installation analysis. I sort of hint at it in Part 1 of my Mate Install guide linked here but a genuine preamble of which distro best matches your system is missing so here it is:

            The Porteus distros are now in three major categories; x86_64, i586 and i486. Fairly straightforward right? Not exactly. If your system has a 64 bit capable processor and at least 1GB of RAM, you can use any of the x86_64 distros and get good results but if your RAM is less, you may want to consider an alternative. You can recompile your kernel to get an exact match but that's not a newbie thing so what can we do to make life better?

            Consider 32 bit software uses less memory and is generally smaller than its 64bit counterpart. This will result in a faster system if your memory can't fit all the running apps. RAM access is multiples faster than disk especially if you have a slow disk and this results in a snappier system. This is a likely scenario if you are using older hardware. Another thing to consider is the bus on which your drive is on. If you have IDE, the newer kernels may not make the best use of them. I have happily installed Porteus 3.1 on many a ubiquitous Dell, 64bit capable P4, with IDE disks sans issues. I can't say the same thing with attempts of x86_64 distros. Let's have short look at common hardware and distros:

            i486DX4 (133MHz, <256MB of RAM, IDE bus) - no question here, you're stuck with i486 Porteus 3.1 and tweaking up your software.
            Pentium Pro/P2 (400MHz, <512MB of RAM, IDE bus) - the i586 distros are perfectly suited here but things start to get a little more complicated below.
            P3 (600MHz, <512MB RAM, IDE bus) - technically, the P3 is a 32bit i686 but there are next generation SSE sets missing from it so I would stick with i586 distros but what if you have a 1st gen Celeron? Here the reduced cache of that CPU may benefit from the simpler i486 builds.
            P3 (Coppermine Celeron, 512MB RAM, IDE bus) - the same issue exists here, the cache is smaller than a full fledged P3 but it's fully associative and a real i686. You need a 32bit distro but the i586 doesn't run optimally on it. Here the i486 distros run better on the Celeron than the i586 builds. I'd love to try a 32bit i686 distro on these systems but they are no longer supported on the mirrors I've seen. If someone knows better, please link them here.
            P4 (<2.4GHz, 512MHz RAM and IDE bus) - I haven't had recent successes with Porteus on these platforms because I have no 32bit i686 builds to try. The i486 builds ran like a champ on them but the Porteus 3.1 limitations apply. Most egregious of these was the difficulty running the fabulous Firefox Quantum.
            P4 (>2.4GHz, 512MB RAM and SATA bus) - these processors are x86_64 capable and the 64bit builds run fine on them IF they have an SATA bus. If you have an IDE disk subsystem, you might experience the same headache as with the 32bit P4 systems with constant disk thrashing and slow access times.

            I haven't any Porteus experience with non intel platforms so if you do, feel free to add to my reported experience here.

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