Hello,
I am just testing the new Porteus v5-1 Alpha and I'm writing from it.
The fact that actually drove me to testing a new version were a few minor hardware problems under Win7, where I immidately suspected a bad HD driver (and I was right).
I.e., my harddisk (WD 4TB) suddenly went very slow (14 mb/sec, I was more expecting like 120MB/sec). So I booted my old Porteus 3, but it also took 35 mb/sec -- still too slow. I only got full speed in copying a lot of files by using this new Porteus-v5.1 alpha - 100mb/sec average. Nice start!
At this point, I have to admit I am still using very very old hardware, i.e. a Intel Q6600 CPU, MSI Neo3-FR motherboard, 8 GB Ram, etc:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 1
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 2
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 3
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Root Port 6
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Controller
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller #1
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller #2
02:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller (rev 03)
02:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller (rev 03)
04:00.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VL80x xHCI USB 3.0 Controller (rev 03)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Turks PRO [Radeon HD 7570]
06:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Turks/Whistler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6000 Series]
So, you see, this is a very modest hardware by todays' standards.
Still, porteus 5.1 alpha (Linux porteus.example.net 6.12.8-porteus #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jan 2 14:44:24 MSK 2025 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux) is quite fast.
Audio worked out of the box, I could not find any issues. About video drivers, I didn't care -- whatever comes with it as standard is good enough for my very old ATI Radeon HD 7570 card. No need for extra drivers.
Well, the next thing I tried is to install additional programs. The option "Internet->Browser Selection tool" was great, especially the additional programs like "anydesk". Yay!
However, starting Anydesk 6.4.0, it always gives me an Anydesk ID number "0". Zero, nada. Strange. I don't quite know what to do with it now.
Next, I tried to install some other modules using the new tool "slapt-mod" and this is where things got a bit strange: Slapt-mod starts downloading, but then breaks. The downloaded files are at /tmp/GETMOD. I searched for them and simply converted them to xzm using the usual tgz2xzm tool. Then I copied these resulting XZM files to USB stick, rebooted, and they worked neatly.
So if you can tell me how to properly install some fresh modules, let me know.
Anyway, using these methods I currently installed :
anydesk-6.4.0-x86_64-1.xzm/ gstreamer-1.24.12-x86_64-1.xzm/ openvpn-2.6.13-x86_64-1.xzm/
firefox-134.0.2-x86_64-en-US.xzm/ gtk+3-3.24.48-x86_64-1.xzm/ opera-stable-116.0.5366.21-x86_64-en-US-1.xzm/
freerdp-2.11.7-x86_64-2.xzm/ gtkglext-1.2.0-x86_64-2dj.xzm/ pango-1.56.1-x86_64-2.xzm/
google-chrome-132.0.6834.159-x86_64-en-US-1.xzm/ libnl-1.1.4-x86_64-5.xzm/ pulseaudio-17.0-x86_64-5.xzm/
graphene-1.10.8-x86_64-1.xzm/ nano-8.3-x86_64-1.xzm/ yt-dlp-2025.01.26-noarch-1ncm.xzm/
gst-plugins-base-1.24.12-x86_64-1.xzm/ nmap-7.95-x86_64-3.xzm/
I am also pleased with the new openvpn, which took my config files straight out of windows and just worked fine. Also NMAP simply worked instantly.
So, I have fewer complains than usual, but I'd really like to know how to make new modules "properly".