The future of Porteus

New features which should be implemented in Porteus; suggestions are welcome. All questions or problems with testing releases (alpha, beta, or rc) should go in their relevant thread here, rather than the Bug Reports section.
roadie
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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#46 by roadie » 08 Nov 2015, 17:50

Igor wrote:Minimalism is beautiful. But it is minimalism worth the time and worth twice. First we have to remove the extra dependencies, and then spend a lot of time wondering that something is not working. In search of a compromise between the free space and free time, it is wiser to choose the time to the detriment of the space. Free space is at all. Time at all - very little.
I guess we need to define minimalism, it's not what it used to be. You can go from a Slitaz iso at 38 megs and have a smooth OS....it'll do what a lot of people need done. It will also run on older boxes and laptops. But, size matters to most people, they need the biggest, most powerful warp time equipment possible. A distro iso coming in at 1.5 gig is pretty normal now....with 2 browsers, 3 word processing apps, dozens of games....all the bells and whistles.

It isn't needed as much as it's wanted. But, that's usually what you have to provide if you want to succeed with your idea of a distro....same with smartphones. Personally, I like minimal, my iPhone is 5 years old, still on OS-4. It's a piece of shit, but it's the dumbest phone I can get....company provided.
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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#47 by Tonio » 08 Nov 2015, 19:54

On size ... my base lxde system (arch based) is 176MB. I am not sure why people think that systemd is insanely huge. If compiled in full, it is 69 binaries at a combined weight of 5.2Mb. It also makes some other packages redundant.
It is not the size of systemd that many people argue about. It is mostly other things that get its unwanted/negative reputation. It wants to take over, it* could have backdoors to NSA and other goverment surveillance stuff and the resistance to it coming/taking over is spelling the end of Porteus as we know it. For many people they want the cake and eat it too, and I believe it is unfair to our developers, but the reasons they are giving for the change are correct and we cannot complain about them.

For me I run porteus as I used to run Slax as a pocket OS on a usb drive with many stuff that I usually compile and install on my own, via, source, slackbuild or straight from a slackware package. For installations I usually install Slackware and have one machine running Fedora which has a great variety of packages. I also question why arch and why not Fedora? it has a great many packages which users would want and rpmfusion for the non-free* stuff. I boycotted Fedora 21, but have one machine running Fedora 22 and with all the boot stuff I don't notice systemd, but I now that it is there*. For size, there is Tiny Core it is small and it can be made to work, I have not used it but I know that it is there. I wonder about Salix, Slackel and other Slackware based livecd what will happen to them, my guess is that they would wait to see what Patrick V and official slackware would do wrt systemd. I will try to help in case my help is needed I am grateful for all the years and dedication to the project.
I just hope that Fanthom can release script to create livecd from a slackware install before he calls it quits and moves exclusively to support kiosk version.

Many wonderful things have happened, but my guess is that many users who are opposed to systemd would go over to BSD* and not look back. My $0.02

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#48 by KnallKopf » 08 Nov 2015, 20:25

The lack of packages is only a small problem because on porteus it is easy to build your own packages.
The OS itself is largely irrelevant to the average user. In fact I would say the desktop environment is more important to most users.
This is a really stupid. The choice of the right OS should begin with how are the developers. What is there propulsion ?
For example it is not good when the distrubition depends only on one Man. When he makes a wrong decision or leave the project.
You can change your personal EDV to new distro and forget the old-learned-stuff about this distro.
Is that right that Arch a team with 25 people ?
What is there propulsion ?
Is it possible to build Arch as Linux from scratch ?

Why is development always for the non power users? They have enought OSs to choice.

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#49 by brokenman » 08 Nov 2015, 21:10

This is a really stupid.
Quite a blunt reply. I stand by what I said about 'the average user'.
The choice of the right OS should begin with how are the developers.
Perhaps it should. But does that mean it does? Go out and ask 20 people on the street who develops their operating system and report the answers back here.
Even if they can pronounce Volkerding do you honestly believe they know what motivates him? C'mon, who's being stupid? Do you give the same importance to the computer that runs your OS? Do you wonder about the motivation of Toshiba or DELL and why they introduced secure boot? Porbably not. It boots your OS, which gets you into an environment to accomplish your computing goals.

Who has the largest percentage of users in the computer world? <-- obvious
Do you think they even know what version of OS they are running? <-- many think their OS is microsoft office
Why do they use the computer in the first place? <-- 95% will say to use the internet or office apps

As an example I put Porteus on a thin client at my work. Nobody even noticed the difference for 3 months. Then someone realized that it was faster and didn't crash. They had absolutely no idea what OS they were using and didn't really care, as long as it got the job done. That is where my comment came from. Notice I separated 'average users' from 'power users'. Power users fall into another category. The category that come and use Porteus or that stray into the world of Linux in general.
Why is development always for the non power users?
It's not. Look at Arch Linux, Gentoo, BSD, LFS, Slackware etc.
For example it is not good when the distrubition depends only on one Man.
Hey, feel free to help out any time. It would be much appreciated.

Is that right that Arch a team with 25 people?
I don't know, but they do an awesome job. Best wikis on the planet in my opinion. We can make use of that.

What is there propulsion?

See my answer above.

@ Tonio
People have made comments specifically about the size of systemd. Some don't believe that it can even be used as a 'portable lightweight' solution. It can be intrusive (I doubt NSA plant type intrusive since the code is rather open) but there is always the option to disable the parts you don't want. I am happy for it to take over journaling (although binary journals suck) and even cron jobs as it unifies the problem and takes away worrying about any dependencies. I think creating slackware live scripts to build Porteus can be done, but it is not as simple as that. There is initrd.xz, 000-kernel and vmlinuz to maintain.

Perhaps when systemBSD matures a little it can be used in place of systemd.
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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#50 by roadie » 08 Nov 2015, 21:49

The average user coming to Porteus cares little to nothing about the underlying base, they just want it to work first time and do everything they need. These people are largley coming from a Microsoft world, where everything is done for them. And they expect the same damn thing in Porteus...people have lost the ability to do for themselves.

It's when they finally get fed up with the lack of control over their Windows system that they look to Linux. Most previous Linux users coming to Porteus are in a different place altogether, there's no comparison. We can discuss forever the merits of changing systems, or keeping Slackware, but we need to remember that we are, for the most part, well experienced with Linux. We see things differently to a new user with no Linux experience at all....and thats who Porteus is aimed at.

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#51 by ion4449 » 08 Nov 2015, 22:04

I've used Manjaro which is Arch based and I am an eternal Linux Noob!...sudo apt-get update is about as deep I go with the cli and I had very few problems with Manjaro....If you the developer feel that Arch is the way to go for the reasons you have stated....then I'm with you 100%...as a matter of fact it may inspire others who seem to want the slackware model to be maintained to step up to the plate....at any rate I'm new here and not a computer whiz by any means....just want you to know that I appreciate all of you guys/gals good work!

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#52 by brokenman » 08 Nov 2015, 22:07

Thanks ion4449. Welcome and thanks for getting back on topic.

As it stands, the main concern in this thread seems to be that Porteus will use systemd. I have no strong feelings one way or another about systemd. It gets the job done. Therefore, the swap of base to Arch should be more the focus here. If you don't like systemd that's fine, but please remember that systemd is not the deciding factor here.
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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#53 by Tonio » 08 Nov 2015, 22:24

If you don't like systemd that's fine, but please remember that systemd is not the deciding factor here.
The deciding factor is time/ or lack thereof to maintain many desktops and two architectures. A great deal of work behind the scenes takes place so we can have a great porteus and a build tool where we/add/remove stuff(packages) to the the way we like it. It seems that some people are upset because systemd enters porteus, but it is something that has to be done in order to continue with porteus having the options it has right now. Time is money and since fanthom is moving over more exclusively to Kiosk edition, that leaves Brokenman only as the sole developer. Don't worry brokenman you have to do what you have to do. If there is some way that we can help, please let us/me know. I don't consider myself a power user, but I am stubborn to get things working and even if I cannot help in developing, I can help with testing or other things and suggestions.

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#54 by ion4449 » 08 Nov 2015, 22:38

As I am not a power user.....I certainly fall into the non-power user group....I have not the knowledge to comment on systemd one way or the other...I will say this...I have run a Linux based system on my computers for the last 5 or 6 yrs....and many is the os that I have tried/played with.....really linux has come far from when I first tried ubuntu and had to install wifi drivers from the cli...copy and paste after spending many hours searching forums....so for me as an average user it comes down to this...."does it work...can I install and run my fav programs and is it stable".....after that I'm pretty cool with whatever is easier for the developers and maintainers....you guys are the heart and souls of the os!.....It's wonderful that you ask for input and that you truly care about putting a great product out there for the user....If systemd is the future then so be it...."Let's not cry over spilled milk...while the cow yet lives"

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#55 by Ed_P » 08 Nov 2015, 23:56

I think it would be nice/fitting that the two admins release one last Slackware version of Porteus. A 3.1.1 or 3.2 version before the end of the year, while they are still together. One with an updated kernel and as many Slackware patches reasonably possible, like hibernate when the top is closed on a laptop. Thus the Slackware version of Porteus would go out in style. Then the beginning of next year brokenman can release his version of Arch Porteus, Porteus 4.0. This would take pressure off releasing it soon, would allow time to fine tune it and provide time to be with family for the holidays.

Just a thought.
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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#56 by sean » 09 Nov 2015, 00:51

@brokenman,

Might be good to point this threads viewers to your request for input device names:

http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=5199

and I suppose this message does that anyway.


Also, I ditto what Ed_P suggested above, a very considerate idea.

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#57 by brokenman » 09 Nov 2015, 03:43

Thanks. If we do in fact change base then I will do what I can to release a last slackware porteus, but it kind of goes 180 degrees against why I proposed a change in the first place. Can't exactly release a last version and abandon all support for it. It is also a little more work than you might think, to ensure everything is in place for a new release. I/we have to think about:

usm (x2), usm server (x2), locales (x2), website autobuild, forum, 8 desktops, porteus gtk-apps (x2), kernel (x2), crippled sources (x2), kernel headers (x2), devel modules (x2), browsers (x4), office apps (x4), graphics drivers (x4), documentation and more and more.

I would love to be considerate, but there has to be a limit.
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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#58 by francois » 09 Nov 2015, 03:47

Please Ed, reread this thread, in peculiar brokenman's interventions. You don't want to burn the man.

Fanthom will not continue working on porteus desktop edition. You have to have a slackware 14.2 finished to issue another version of porteus.

Nobody with coding expertise has offered to take fanthom's place even to maintain some porteus slackware version., even some minimal version with only one desktop or even without xorg and no desktop. So here we need some volunteers with coding and linux expertise. Everyone want the work done, but no one wants to do the job.

Presently, nemesis with arch linux as basic distribution is experimental. With pman as wrapper of pacman it looks good. We will have to see if it can hold its promises. At least this way porteus might survive as it looks like.
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#59 by sean » 09 Nov 2015, 07:36

@brokenman,

Bottom line for me, brokenman, is to have this Live Thumb Drive thing we now call Porteus to continue. Rename, renumber it, if necessary, and do it all with the least amount of resistance, "as easily as possible for the developer(s)."

That's what I'm hoping for, the continuence of this unique Linux portable concept.

Again Porteus is "yours", and it sounds like you've made the turn, keep going! I look forward to the result of this new work, which I'm confident will be exceptional, as always.

@Ed_P,

No disrespect, and not to be wishy-washy, but I think brokenman is in motion, and I want to stay out of his way :-)

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Re: The future of Porteus

Post#60 by Ed_P » 09 Nov 2015, 13:41

francois wrote:Fanthom will not continue working on porteus desktop edition.
From the 1st post he will stop in December. That implies he is available till then. My point is the two could work together to wrap up the current version.
You have to have a slackware 14.2 finished to issue another version of porteus.
I'm not sure that is correct but it could be. I'll let the admins decide.
Everyone want the work done, but no one wants to do the job.
I'm not sure that's true. Some may want the "work done" and not have the skills to help. :(
sean wrote: do it all with the least amount of resistance, "as easily as possible for the developer(s)."

That's what I'm hoping for, the continuence of this unique Linux portable concept.
Me too. :good:
Ed

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