since Porteus 4.0 offers seven distinct DE's i thought it would be nice to have a way to try them all, without having to load all modules at once or manually swapping base modules. In fact, i tried swapping and it didn't work very well, got some problems with icons not showing up on some DE's, i think because i was saving changes, and that caused conflicts between DE's.
The best way i came up was to use one as default and the remaining as optional, using cheatcodes on porteus.cfg to load a new DE and block the default. I also used the cheatcode changes-ro to not save changes, not breaking the icons again. If you don't have a save.dat or a posix filesystem to save changes, then this cheatcode is not needed. If i want to save any change i have edit the entry and remove changes-ro.
I think it would be nice, specially for a newbie, to have a .iso with that configuration to try all the desktop environments, considering that it would add less than 170 MB to a KDE .iso.
Here is a sample of my porteus.cfg:
Code: Select all
LABEL DEFAULT
MENU LABEL Porteus KDE
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus changes-ro
LABEL CINNAMON
MENU LABEL Porteus Cinnamon
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus load=cinnamon noload=kde changes-ro
...
Code: Select all
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 90
UI vesamenu.c32
DEFAULT DEFAULT
MENU BACKGROUND fundo.jpg
MENU TITLE Porteus-4.0 32bit
MENU WIDTH 30
MENU MARGIN 2
MENU ROWS 10
MENU HELPMSGROW 17
MENU TIMEOUTROW 28
MENU TABMSGROW 15
MENU CMDLINEROW 22
MENU HSHIFT 4
MENU VSHIFT 5
menu color screen 37;40 #00000000 #00000000 none
menu color border 30;44 #00000000 #00000000 none
menu color title 1;36;44 #ffF6FF00 #30003f07 none
menu color unsel 37;44 #ffffffff #00000000 none
menu color hotkey 1;37;44 #ff8037b7 #00000000 none
menu color sel 7;37;40 #ff111B78 #003f7fbf none
menu color hotsel 1;7;37;40 #ffaf67f7 #003f7fbf none
menu color scrollbar 30;44 #00000000 #00000000 none
menu color tabmsg 31;40 #ffB6F538 #00000000 none
menu color cmdmark 1;36;40 #ffff0000 #00000000 none
menu color cmdline 37;40 #ffffffff #ff000000 none
menu color pwdborder 30;47 #ffff0000 #00000000 std
menu color pwdheader 31;47 #ffff0000 #00000000 std
menu color pwdentry 30;47 #ffff0000 #00000000 std
menu color timeout_msg 37;40 #ff809aef #00000000 none
menu color timeout 1;37;40 #ffb72f9f #00000000 none
menu color help 37;40 #ffD5F538 #00000000 none
menu color msg07 37;40 #90ffffff #00000000 std
LABEL hd
MENU LABEL Windows
COM32 chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1
TEXT HELP
Starts Windows.
ENDTEXT
LABEL DEFAULT
MENU LABEL Porteus KDE
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus changes-ro
LABEL CINNAMON
MENU LABEL Porteus Cinnamon
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus load=cinnamon noload=kde changes-ro
LABEL LXDE
MENU LABEL Porteus LXDE
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus load=lxde noload=kde changes-ro
LABEL LXQT
MENU LABEL Porteus LXQT
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus load=lxqt noload=kde changes-ro
LABEL MATE
MENU LABEL Porteus MATE
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus load=mate noload=kde changes-ro
LABEL OPENBOX
MENU LABEL Porteus Openbox
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus load=openbox noload=kde changes-ro
LABEL XFCE
MENU LABEL Porteus XFCE
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus load=xfce noload=kde changes-ro
MENU BEGIN Advanced
LABEL DEFAULT
MENU LABEL Porteus KDE not fresh
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND changes=/porteus
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus the best way we can.
Try to autoconfigure graphics
card and use the maximum
allowed resolution
ENDTEXT
LABEL fresh
MENU LABEL Always Fresh
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND nomagic base_only norootcopy
TEXT HELP
Normally Porteus saves all changes
to the /porteus/changes/ directory
on the boot media (if writable)
and restores them next boot.
Use this option to start a fresh
system, changes are not read from
or written to any device
ENDTEXT
LABEL copy2ram
MENU LABEL Copy To RAM
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND copy2ram
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus the same as above,
but first copy all data to RAM
to get a huge speed increase
(needs >768MB)
ENDTEXT
LABEL text
MENU LABEL Text mode
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND 3
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus in text mode and
start the command prompt only
ENDTEXT
LABEL intel
MENU LABEL Intel ucode update
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/intel-ucode.cpio,/boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND nomagic base_only norootcopy
TEXT HELP
This mode upgrades your intel microcode
for use with intel processors that
receive the TSC_DEADLINE error message
ENDTEXT
LABEL pxe-boot
MENU LABEL Porteus as PXE server
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND pxe
TEXT HELP
Run Porteus as usual, but also
initialize a PXE server.
This will allow you to boot Porteus
on other computers over a network
ENDTEXT
MENU SEPARATOR
LABEL plop
MENU LABEL PLoP BootManager
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/plpbt
TEXT HELP
Run the plop boot manager.
This utility provides handy
boot-USB options for machines
with vintage/defective BIOS
ENDTEXT
MENU END