The future of Porteus

[Bogomips]

What would be more appropriate? This is getting to be tough, the blonde lady or the red hair lady?

Surely you mean the wife, the Mother of your children, or the Mistress?

[brokenman]

Arch is 36 developers and dozens of active assistants

This is exactly my original point and impetus for changing base. Isn't it better to utilize these resources to ensure the longevity of Porteus? Arch documentation is without a doubt the best there is. Finding the answer to any problems is much easier. Building Porteus Arch took me 45 minutes. Building the latest Porteus Slackware would take MUCH longer since they bumped some important core packages. There would be a lot of recompiling.

We have no strategy and therefore the erroneous tactic.

I don't agree.

Porteus is a set of scripts and patches

I only wish it were that simple.

Let's help to make Porteus. Let's not re-invent the Arch, to build it from scratch.

But wait ... if we use a slackware base are we re-inventing slackware? Are we building it from scratch?

If porteus is to move base over there, why reinvent, get one of the many versions ...

Aren't there also a myriad of live slackware distros?

Let's separate flies from cutlets.

What you are suggesting (only releasing a base) is moving our aim away from attracting new comers and focussing on being a distro that experienced linux users can enjoy. That isn't (and never will be) the aim of Porteus. It will be released as 001 (text mode), 002 (xorg base), and 003 (desktop) and perhaps 004(apps) modules. This allows beginners to have a ready to go desktop environment (their choice) and advanced users to strip it naked and build there own system. Creating a single 001-porteus module doesn't make sense to me. Many of the custom porteus scripts only support with the 4 current desktops that we use. I believe it is better to stay with fanthoms design of having modules according to runlevels.

What would be easier to do?

That's the question I have been asking myself lately. Porteus can be created on ANY distro. You dont need a slackware-live to create porteus. I created porteus arch on porteus slackware. My technique is to chroot into a partition with the base files and start building, then from the packages produced I start building the modules that we know as porteus.

As I dig deeper into systemd I find some things unecessarily convulted and complex, and others so simple my mother could do it. What I like about slackware is the stability. Rock solid. What I don't like is the range of package choice.

[Igor]

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[roadie]

@igor
When I try to see your vision of Porteus, it seems to be very far away from what Porteus was designed to be. It looks to be something an experienced user could be comfortable with, but would leave a new user floundering in confusion.

It's great to have the package availabilty you get with Arch, and dependency problems are far less than Slackware. But, I don't believe Porteus can adopt the bleeding edge philosophy that comes with Arch, I know I don't want to be constantly building packages and upgrading...I just want the damn thing to work.

I can see brokenman's vision working, a core base, xorg, a light desktop and maybe a goodies package. I would think upgrades could be done every 3 months...would depend on what had to be upgraded. I'm not sure on how different desktops would be handled, maybe as francois has suggested, it could be a community thing. That becomes problematic though, as people tend to move on.

The main thing though, is that Porteus needs to keep the module base format it has now, thats what seperates it from all the others. What the base distro is really doesn't matter, just that with Porteus right now, Arch is a more viable base than Slackware in terms of the time and work needed to produce it.

In the end though, it has to be noobie friendly, or it will die.

[brokenman]

I see that you besides Slackware anymore about anything can't think

As I have always said. No decision has yet been made. I am certainly not looking forward to compiling stuff for the version.

I would think upgrades could be done every 3 months

This is how I see it. Porteus would provide an update mechanism that is more conservative than arch. Users are free to upgrade along with arch, but only updates through the porteus update mechanism would be supported.

In the end though, it has to be noobie friendly, or it will die

Definitely.

[fullmoonremix]

Salutations...

@ brokenman... do you remember my whining (eg. blue4meridian?) about packages before the flame war last summer?

Well... since you added the slackonly repo 90% of my complaints were resolved

and the remaining packages I convert and/or compile myself (yes... I'm compiling now).

What I'm saying is... do you think "slackonly" put the availability issue to rest for Slackware Porteus?

Best Regards...

[brokenman]

and the remaining packages I convert and/or compile myself

That should be enough to answer your question. Those remaining packages would no doubt be covered in arch already. There is really no comparison in terms of package count. Slackware has always had a modest package count int he official repos. USM helps, but still doesn't hold a candle to other distros.

[JosepZ]

I just stumbled upon this thread after a few months without checking the forum and I am sincerely stunned with the initial reaction brokenman got with his quasi-announcement on base-switching. That was MEAN! WHAT THE H·E·L·L IS WRONG WITH YOU, PEOPLE??!!! I'm starting to think that those who claim that the Linux user base is largely formed by anal nerds actually have a point. And I'm one of them, so I honestly don't want to get there. Maybe you could put your meta-sh*t aside and show some f***ing gratitude and respect to the man for creating and maintaining a wonderful and fully portable OS. And the best one at that without a doubt. Really, gratitude instead of rants about how stupid his decisions are and how dead the distro is, would be something he'd appreciate for all the hard work, I'm sure. Systemd is here to stay and I couldn't care less. All those distros carrying it are alive and well. Turn the page, carry on. My initial excitement with the possibilities of an Arch-based Porteus got broken by a wave of hostility and apocalyptic rants by people who actually don't have a clue about how it will turn out if it ever happens. Why don't you apply some common sense and just wait for the 4.0 version's release so you can actually TRY IT??

I can't believe I am saying this to adult people. Honestly, guys, I would be ashamed if I saw a reaction like that on my children. And they're 9 and 5 years old. Grow the f**k up.

My hat's off to you, brokenman, for creating a wonderful distro that I use on an almost daily basis. Thank YOU for all the hard work you invested on this. I love Porteus just the way it is, and still can't wait to see how the 4.0 branch turns out. The future's loaded with exciting possibilities, and hopefully it will all be for the better. And if it isn't, I will still thank you (and all the other people involved, of course). Slackware or Arch-based, it will still be Porteus. Small, module-based and convenient.

Just my 2000 cents. Cheers to those who showed some actual interest instead of complaining.

[sci_fi]

@JosephZ
I couldn't agree more. I use Porteus daily, almost exclusively. A superb distro. I look forward to its continuing evolution.
Keep up the excellent work, Porteus team.

sci_fi

[tmsg]

Apart from some of the language, I agree with most of what JosepZ wrote.

The Brits have a saying... "He who pays the piper calls the tune". AFAICS the dev(s) are not simply paying the piper, they *are* the piper! They build this w/o payment, in their own free time and we should be glad and thankful that they are actually willing to argue their case and to listen. I for one would have absolutely no problem with a BDFL approach... if I don't like what I see I can always take one of the myriad other Linux distros.

Just to reiterate what I'd list as my main priorities:
1. Modular and not a rolling distro.
2. Small, fast, bare bones.
3. A fully-featured development module.
4. A reliable package manager.

[francois]

According to what is going on with nemesis development (rc). this is exactly what you should get. In order words Porteus slackware with more packages availability and some way to the rolling release less rolling.

Try it here in How to get it:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=5066

[tmsg]

Try it here in How to get it:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=5066

Guess what?! I've already done that...! Thanks to VirtualBox playing around with these things is easy and painless.

It's still early days of course, but Nemesis looks very good. For my current project I'm more interested in a stable environment, so I'll stick with 3.1 but once there's a stable XFCE version I'll take a very close look:-)

[JosepZ]

Apart from some of the language, I agree with most of what JosepZ wrote.

Yeah, sorry about that. We Mediterraneans tend to be foul-mouthed. Especially when we're pissed!

[mparillo]

I stumbled on this thread also. What I really liked was the using a simple web page, my ISO had just what I wanted it (Plasma 4, Chrome). Will that function to build your own ISO still be offered in the Future?

[brokenman]

That would be up to Hamza. If not I could certainly create a minimal Porteus install where you run a wizard client side to build your own distro.