Thanks Francois this is a much needed thread. We get a little over familiar with Porteus and forget that newcomers may want to know how it differs from previous versions and also slax. Here is what i came up with. It i probably incomplete so please feel free to add to it or edit the post if you have permissions.
Changelog for Porteus-v1_final-i486.iso from Porteus-v09-i486.iso
REPO
http://ponce.cc/porteus/i486/current
KERNEL
Updated kernel to 2.6.38.5
- Improved hibernation
- Support for older i486 processors
- USB HID is compiled into kernel
- Fixed dhcpcd long delay for IP in rc.inet1
INSTALLATION
We have tried to make installation of Porteus easier including tidying up the boot folder.
Subfolders have been added to include a tools & docs folder.
Windows users can execute the
'win_start_here.hta' file for a nice GUI.
Linux users can run
'lin_start_here.sh'
Updated
syslinux &
extlinux means you can install on linux partitions and still have a boot menu.
Added features include:
- Option to backup/restore MBR during installation
- Windows UAC will be disabled so users don't get confused
- md5sum check of essential files during installation
Once you have booted into porteus you have a menu item to install porteus to a USB device.
BOOT TIME
A highly modified linuxrc (by fanthom) means boot time is minimized.
See video here of Porteus booting in 10 seconds!
The standard boot options are still available with an additional plop option.
- text mode
- always fresh
- LXDE graphic mode
- KDE graphic mode
- memtest
- plop to support older machines
10 loops are created during boot so mounting of file systems won't fail.
Nouveau is blacklisted by default, due to difficulty with compilation of nvidia binary driver
PXE boot has been updated and improved.
If the default passwords remained unchanged, you will be prompted during boot to enter a new password and this will be saved as a system module.
If a windows partition is sensed during boot, an xfs save.dat container file will automagically be created to hold the changes made to the default system. If the modules folder is writable it will be moved there by default. This will narrow the chances of corruption of 'persistent changes data'. A GUI tools has also been added to resize, create or attempt to recover corrupt save.dat files.
WINDOW MANAGERS
LXDE git compiled on slackware 13.75 (ponce)
- improved icons
- added login script to create desktop trash
- added menu item to empty trash
KDE bumped to 3.5.12 Trinity
- Many visual changes
- Performance improvements
- be aware that /root/.kde & /home/.kde have been changed to .kde3
- Improved right click service menu options
- Trinity is a very large version of KDE so we have stripped it down and kept all the extracted packages as modules that require no dependencies!
IMPORTANT CHANGES
0. Compression of initrd has been changed to newer lzma2 (xz). All modules have also been moved to this compression as the ratio and performance are superior (see bottom of page). All modules will now end in .xzm. Any older squashfs3 or squash4 .lzm modules will be automatically converted during activation.
1. Many new cheatcodes have been added. Please familiarize yourself with these (docs folder) as many questions asked on the forums can be solved with these.
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... 3038#p3038
2. Userland has been bumped to slackware 13.75
3. Wicd network manager puts and end to internet connection problems
4. The LST (Language selection tool) allows users to download the locale and man files for their chosen language. Keyboard layout is easily changed.
5. Firefox has been update to version 4
6. Alot of scripts have been updated with GUI - system menu
NEW MENU ITEMS
Games
- Extra classic games
Graphics
- Color chooser
- Screen ruler
Internet
- Firefox 4
- Netowrk folder wizard
- Dialup tool
- Remote desktop connection
- Online dictionary
Multimedia
- Beep media player
- CD audio ripper
- Krec recording tools
- Arts control tools
Office
- A more complete koffice suite
System
- save.dat file creator/resizer
- Language selection tool
- Magic folders setup tool
- Module manager
- USB installer
- Ksysguard performance monitor
- Porteus encryptor
- Porteus FAQ page
- Porteus moduel tools
- Porteus network setup wizard
- Porteus system info generator
- Power saver switch
Utilities
- Scientific calculator
- Countdown application
- Xarchiver
NEW BUILT IN SCRIPTS
mloop - creates a spare loop and mounts a file system at /mnt/loop (brokenman)
save-changes - saves your changes to a specified path (fanthom)
rempkg - removes a package from a specified base module (brokenman)
extpkg - extracts a package from a base module or running porteus (brokenman)
modtools - module manipulation tools (brokenman)
porteusmodman - manage base modules (fanthom)
Compression analysis:
Linux porteus 2.6.38.5-porteus i686 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 460 @ 2.53GHz GenuineIntel
Using virtualbox and a bash stopwatch script i wrote.
Compilation command
mksquashfs folder module.xzm -b 1M
15M iso/porteus/base/000-kernel.xzm
44M iso/porteus/base/001-core.xzm
58M iso/porteus/base/002-xorg.xzm
3.5M iso/porteus/base/003-lxde.xzm
52M iso/porteus/base/004-kde.xzm
20M iso/porteus/base/005-kdeapps.xzm
9.7M iso/porteus/base/006-koffice.xzm
34M iso/porteus/base/007-devel.xzm
13M iso/porteus/base/008-firefox.xzm
bash-4.1# du -sh porteus-v1-i486.iso
257M porteus-v1-i486.iso
Boot time 31s
Compilation command
mksquashfs folder module.xzm -b 64K
18M iso/porteus/base/000-kernel.xzm
54M iso/porteus/base/001-core.xzm
60M iso/porteus/base/002-xorg.xzm
4.3M iso/porteus/base/003-lxde.xzm
58M iso/porteus/base/004-kde.xzm
22M iso/porteus/base/005-kdeapps.xzm
11M iso/porteus/base/006-koffice.xzm
39M iso/porteus/base/007-devel.xzm
15M iso/porteus/base/008-firefox.xzm
288M porteus-v1-i486.iso
Boot time 24s