There could be versions stripped out to the bone. Even without x for the brave. This is not an issue with manjaro or any arch. But I do not suggest a basic release without x. A documented method to experiment with x versions, why not.neko wrote:I think that the most essential of Porteus is the small size.
I'm afraid I will disagree. Although I think I understand neko's motives, I know systems like arch are developed by design on top of tools such as pacman. Those tools have to be there no mutter what else tools will be developed and will be on porteus side. If you do this you may loose future evolution, loose other pacman dependent tools, and probably many classic arch users. Your distribution then will not follow the arch core directives...This is a core part of the arch rolling architecture. If you stay away from it (with a reason), you will building something different, probably incompatible and with unpredicted behaviour. Not for me.neko wrote: it might not be appropriate to employ an original package manager (pacman or apt/dpkg) directly.
But on the case that the reason of applying other distro to Porteus is to use its package manager,
it might be better to use original distro.
Manjaro for example, have some of its own tools, users consider it a different distribution and it is, it has its own repository (pretty much the same kind of software with arch) but it respects almost all fundamental arch tools, and pacman is one of them, you cannot bypass it without painful consequences.
I think developers and users will have to stay on well supported paths, and join forces if possible with relevant communities for any reason or on going needs.
I cannot say much about ubundu, but i guess similar principles apply on their core architecture tools.