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Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 03 Jun 2017, 04:16
by fulalas
Tonio wrote:Porteus uses compression, its size will be smaller and voidlinux is a regular install without compression. What would be nice would be to apply the same compression technique; ie, use xzm compression/aufs on void; then one can see why it would be smaller.
I'm not sure about Void Linux, but all distros that I can remember use hsqs squashfs compression -- the same as Porteus.

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 03 Jun 2017, 05:16
by fulalas
Confirmed: Void Linux, like others, use squashfs compression.

BTW, their LXQt version is completely messed. Lots of missing icons, missing shortcuts, broken widgets, etc. It's really raw and badly done. And in the end we have a 460 mb ISO with no apps at all -- not even a notepad. I can't see any meaning :unknown:

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 03 Jun 2017, 05:28
by roadie
If Porteus was not available, Void Linux would take it's place on my machines. Void runs very well when set up under the Porteus module format, some work required to do it but it responds well. The Void install, setup like a Porteus frugal install, takes up around 215 mb with Xfce. I think that's a base system, no big word processing apps.

Slitaz would probably be second choice, it too responds very well to the modular approach, though there was no benefit to converting it's init to Runit. The stock Slitaz init scripts are very fast and reliable. I suppose the biggest drawback with Slitaz is that it's in need of an overhaul now.

I've been using Runit as the init for Porteus for well over a year, with no problems at all. I'm not using Porteus for printing, scanning or that kind of thing so I don''t know how those operations might be impacted. But for everyday browsing and such it's been good. Nemesis runs fine under Runit too.

I personally think Runit is a far better alternative init, and will be until the various desktops start incorporating systemd dependencies.....and I'm sure that's coming.

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 03 Jun 2017, 08:19
by fulalas
roadie wrote:I personally think Runit is a far better alternative init, and will be until the various desktops start incorporating systemd dependencies.....and I'm sure that's coming.
I'm not familiar with Runit. What are the practical advantages?

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 03 Jun 2017, 12:02
by Tonio
fulalas wrote:Confirmed: Void Linux, like others, use squashfs compression.

BTW, their LXQt version is completely messed. Lots of missing icons, missing shortcuts, broken widgets, etc. It's really raw and badly done. And in the end we have a 460 mb ISO with no apps at all -- not even a notepad. I can't see any meaning :unknown:
Probably, but on their livecd not on the installed product unless you dd'd it to your usb? Still like you mention, it has lots of missing things and one has to add programs to make it usable. I use LXDE and have not used LXQT so I cannot comment on that one :( and yes they use dash, instead of bash so we cannot shoot ourselves in the foot, because it is minimal and has less possibilities of vulnerabilities.
roadie wrote: I personally think Runit is a far better alternative init, and will be until the various desktops start incorporating systemd dependencies.....and I'm sure that's coming.
They are trying very hard, but there are folks who also try to find ways around the pile of dung as well :) This reminds me of the quote that programmers are making idiot proof programs, but the world is producing bigger and better idiots :(
I had thought that Slackware always used BSD style init scripts, without runlevels like in sysvinit, but they have a combination and support both. It was just a rc.d folder in /etc/ but then it got populated with the rc.1/ rc.d/, etc directories for the runlevels. I wonder how roadie got runit as init supervisor on porteus? I know that printing and scanning work with runit on voidlinux, so I can safely say that it should work with porteus if it were to use runit scripts. I can test if the need arises and give feedback.

If the push for systemd is so great that it cannot be stopped and unavoidable then I would become a full time BSD user. I have experience with FreeBSD and play with DragonflyBSD as well :) I used to compile from source and it was a pleasant experience, had to read UPDATING so I could see the changes, otherwise a program would not start and it was an adventure. Now they have pkg and still one can encounter problems that we have to use a -f option.

Would other users even consider the BSDs? The TRUEOS uses openrc as init and they write that it is faster than traditional bsd startup scripts. There are several differences, but they are still opensource and have less restrictions than many linux distros out there.

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 03 Jun 2017, 19:49
by fulalas
Tonio wrote:Probably, but on their livecd not on the installed product unless you dd'd it to your usb?
But that's the way things are. Porteus always runs as live, and like any other live Linux, it's disk-compressed and get's uncompressed to RAM during boot. :)
Tonio wrote:and yes they use dash, instead of bash so we cannot shoot ourselves in the foot, because it is minimal and has less possibilities of vulnerabilities.
Don't you think this endless search for the perfect version is kind of silly? I see this battle bash vs dash, systemd vs runit, xorg vs wayland, etc. and it reminds me of a religion discussion. They are only programs, right? :D

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 03 Jun 2017, 20:34
by Tonio
@fulalas
You are right! It is an endless loop, and we are all correct in what we believe. They are only programs :)
I do not like dash that much, it lacks many things like autocompletion, but it is the default there :(
Nothing is perfect in this life, but if one can avoid complicated stuff like systemd it is better for our own good. I used to be a heavy fedora user and I did not care about this program or that program, but systemd is like a fungus that is taking over many things and If I can avoid it, I do just that. If it becomes unavoidable in the future, then BSDs will take over my /home.
@pmppinho
You are correct as well, I should stop discussing about voidlinux on porteus. Yes openjdk works on regular void with glibc, I will need 2 install it on one of my machines in August when I get back 2 work. The only thing I hope is that brokenman considers it in case he wants to change bases, but issue a big warning to potential users, you want this or that, you are on your own we will provide a base and you can add x, y, z program but learn to use runit, xbps -Syu on your own.
I appreciate most of all the comments and gotchas of many live distros. We are a community and I will try to help as best I can.

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 05:20
by Evan
Open/Virtualbox doesn't always give a fare evaluation of operating systems in my experience.

Take Solus Budgie for example it was pretty underwhelming on a virtual PC and i couldn't understand what all the fuss was about yet installed to a real hardrive it was silly fast and very impressive.

And on a side note why do linux projects come up with these silly names like dog and budgie and so on , it's had to take them serious , whatever next?

LoLCat Linux or MyPetHamster linux. :)

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 07:59
by Evan
Absolute Linux
http://www.absolutelinux.org

Another one i've never heard of , apparently it's supposed to be a Lightweight slackware desktop based on iceWM where you can create your own ISO live disk.

The download is 1.2gb so i wouldn't call that Lightweight..........

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 08:57
by Evan
The roll your own page says that the ISO you make is less than 700mb so i was starting to wonder if the 1.2gb download ISO was just full of stuff in case you needed it.

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 09:25
by Evan
I see what you mean about their webpage info being dated.

The last time i tried iceWM and ROX file manager was on one of the puppylinux projects and it looked a very archaic like it was from the 1990's.

Maybe i'll try absolute in Virtual drive sometime.

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 10:01
by Evan
If i was to go back to a hardrive install i'm not sure what i would use as i'm pretty undecided about this Systemd situation.

Trying to avoid it is becoming increasingly harder and all these accusations of it having a backdoor has never been proven from what i can see , and even if it does i can't imagine it would be any worse than Windows. :)

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 17:58
by donald
Evan wrote:i'm pretty undecided about this Systemd situation.
systemd is alpha-quality software, even today
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.p ... st_systemd

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 18:17
by Tonio
Evan wrote:If i was to go back to a hardrive install i'm not sure what i would use as i'm pretty undecided about this Systemd situation.

Trying to avoid it is becoming increasingly harder and all these accusations of it having a backdoor has never been proven from what i can see , and even if it does i can't imagine it would be any worse than Windows. :)
Not there yet as for it to be necessity, but it may make its way forcibly to a linux near you. Pulseaudio was also something no one wanted, and now it lives in Slackware :( Go for the BSDs, they do not have a need for systemd for sure!

Re: What would you use if Porteus was not available?

Posted: 05 Jun 2017, 23:21
by Evan
@ donald »
Thanks for the link , 3 years and still Alpha doesn't look good. :good:

@ Tonio »
You're right that there are currently alternatives but from the perspective of your average point and click users migrating from windows then the options are rather difficult when your used to single click installs.