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The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 01:34
by brokenman
As of December, due to other commitments, Fanthom will officially be leaving 'Porteus Desktop Edition' in the capacity of maintainer. He will still be maintaining the popular 'Porteus Kiosk Edition' here on the forum so will still be around. This leaves development of the desktop edition to me. Hamza will remain in the capacity of server administrator. I consider Fanthom the father of Porteus and have the utmost respect for his decisions. This being the case I will be looking to minimize my workload by making a few changes. I propose a change of base for porteus from slackware to arch linux. The reasons for this are as follows:

1) Arch linux has a much larger range of applications readily available for users. Many users have already complained about this.
2) Arch contains all the latest user space applications which work with a wider range of new hardware.
3) It is a chance to rebuild porteus from the ground up and hopefully make some improvements.
4) It is a way for me to minimize maintenance of gtk-apps which I maintain and of which we have quite a few.

We ran a poll on the forum many months ago to gauge interest and to see what viable options we had for desktops.

The changeover would take a few months to complete as I want to thoroughly test everything before releasing, and some GUIs will need to be rewritten. I would be looking for help with building some of the desktop environments and perhaps cut the default options down as building your own desktop is not so difficult on arch. The base modules would be a little larger than present but would also support a larger range of hardware out of the box.

Until a decision is made Porteus will remain at slackware version 14.1. In the end i have to make a decision that I can maintain for the foreseeable future without burning out. That means making some changes.

I would like people to post their opinions informed opinion and suggestions here on this issue.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 02:43
by roadie
It's not an altogether surprising post, the undertones have been here for a while. Frankly, the devel team has done one hell of a job in getting Porteus where it is now, and keeping it there. As it is now, I don't see one maintainer being able to keep to current, let alone introduce new things....just too much to handle, while trying to have some kind of life apart from Porteus.

As to the base, I think Arch would be more suitable, packages are definitely available...hopefully without the Slackware dependency hell. I do think it may be easier to bork your system with Arch....did it yesterday installing gpm, so there is that. I also think there will be a need to adopt the Arch philosophy of RTFM. Not that it's a bad thing, the info is there for those who will search.

I've been running Slackware for around 15 years now, and I'll continue to because it meets my needs. But, I also believe in the right tool for the job and for Porteus, it's probably Arch.

The Arch distro's I've tried weigh in at 3 times the iso size of Porteus, with less in them. Will Porteus grow the same?

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 02:57
by donald
That's too much bad news at once.

(gasping for air) only this:
If leaving Slackware, it's not Porteus anymore.
Case closed.
..."Another one bites the Dust"...

Name it systemd Distro No. 10.000 if you want.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 03:40
by sean
Hope this isn't my last 2 cents,

Maybe we should call it "LL" for Linux Lost", or "Linux Loses", or maybe just "LinSoft", or "MicroNix", or heck, think of some other name for it.

Bottom line is "Big Money" wins yet again because everybody has to be exactly like their peers.

What is it now, 8 years or so, since SUSE Linux jumped into bed with the Redmond bunch, and then a couple years later we hear Red Hat has some private deals with those same Plutocrats. And Red Hat develops Systemd, and all Linux "EXCEPT" (so far as we know) SlackWare Linux, accepts and includes it as default software. Heck even Gentoo is on the verge of adopting Systemd, at least it only offers it as an option.

It's pretty obvious I'm absolutely anti-Microsoft in any way, shape, or form. I admit it. How the heck could a 25 year old "world leading computer company" still have so much trouble with viruses and malware? Maybe because they want it that way!

But now, to break away from Slackware to Arch, which was one of the first to adopt Systemd, well, to me, that's like saying we have to be just like everyone else. And that's an unacceptable attitude.

Please stay with Slackware, at least until such time as even Patrick makes a move to Systemd.

Really, really tough to say all this. However, I still respect all the Porteus users,

Sean

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 04:42
by Ed_P
donald wrote:That's too much bad news at once.
Wow!! I agree. And scary. An OS down to one functional developer. An OS that I have learned so much from.

Will Porteus Kiosk still be Slackware based? Will USM and the tools to support it be maintained?

Will the Arch system be called Nemesis or Porteus Nemesis or Porteus II or Porteus 4.0? I mean this is the Porteus website.

I like the module concept of Porteus and I have heard good things about Arch so maybe the two will be a good mix.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 04:55
by francois
Cheers to our team of maintainers and administrators. They are few, but really of superior quality, and not the least, real hard workers.

Already five years since the fork with slax, this not taking into account the few years of porteus as slax-remix.

Without maintainers or coders there is no linux distro.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 05:35
by sean
Agreed,

I have absolutely no trouble giving credit to the developers, administrators, and maintainers of Porteus. These people, "fanthom, brokenman, and Hamas", along with this years "moderators", besides being wonderful sharing individuals, showing fantastic respect, and patience, even to the most trying of users, are as francois has stated, superior quality people. I believe their motives and integrity are above repoach.

But I don't need a backyard gas grill a little bigger than, or just like the one my neighbor has. I want one that is real Linux, portable, actually usable, and UNIQUE. Suitable for a non-expert like me, and an advanced expert, likely such as you.

Porteus is exactly that................................now!

Finally, I don't want one bit/byte of code eligible for some darn patent infringement lawsuit coming from you know who!

Sean

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 08:20
by aus9
Hi
I would like people to post their opinions and suggestions here on this issue.
first suggestion
I would suggest to maintain your sanity consider one 32 bit disto an optional its 64 bit flavour.

second suggestion
To make Porteus more popular look at the strengths of your current distro. I don't want to say I know them all but if fast booting from an USB media is one of them.....I think choose a Window Manager in preference to a Desktop Environment.

I hate to say I think that means not KDE but LXQt as some members may like KDE as it is more Windows like? And like that.

Which leads to suggestion three
Choose that DE/WM that your server admin says is the most popular to download. I don't have those stats so if it turns out to be KDE so be it.

Unfortunately, if that is the selection I hope you will forgive me if I am not so enthused. Yet to spit the dummy but my mouth is agape. :D

Good luck for all your decisions and feel free to ignore me....as I am not yet up to speed on all matters Porteus.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 08:43
by cttan
This is really a BIG news to me.
I was hoping for an update soon as it is approaching year end. It has been a long time since last update.
Hopefully Porteus team can overcome these challenges and move on.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 12:48
by brokenman
To answer some questions. Porteus with an arch base would be a little bigger than usual but still under the theoretical 300Mb limit. Yes it would be systemd and I understand that will rub a few the wrong way, but honestly, you need to do your homework. Some comments are just plain wrong and others appear to be people that have not even tried systemd, and are just following what other people say about it. That's a little ironic since it is claimed that most linuxes just follow the herd towards systemd. I understand we could lose some users just because of systemd, but in another 3 years when slackware adopts systemd where will the conspiracy theory resistance go? There is a reason why most distros are adopting systemd, and (do your homework) it is not because they are forced to.

Arch does follow a 'think for yourself' philosophy but I would make it as user friendly as the current Porteus, if not more so.

Bottom line is "Big Money" wins yet again
Who wins this big money? Exactly how do they make this money?

And Red Hat develops Systemd
Huh? Have you actually researched who has commit rights to the systemd code base?

Will Porteus Kiosk still be Slackware based?
Still? It isn't slackware based now.

Will USM and the tools to support it be maintained?
No it wouldn't.

Will the Arch system be called Nemesis or Porteus Nemesis or Porteus II or Porteus 4.0?
Porteus 4.0

Lastly, I am using modal language above because the decision has not yet been made. It depends on a few factors.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 14:26
by wread
I am sorry, but Porteus will die, just as we are overheating the Earth and the planet will die again.....

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 14:32
by brokenman
Let's see. Here is a list of the distros that have adopted systemd.

Arch Linux
CoreOS
Debian
Fedora
Gentoo
Mageia
openSUSE
Red Hat Enterprise
SUSE
Ubuntu

Which one of these has 'died'?

Please, if you are going to make outlandish claims please back them up with some valid information. Otherwise you are merely trolling this thread. My ears are open to valid arguments.

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 14:48
by wread
they are almost dead by now... take a look at that http://www.applesfera.com/curiosidades/ ... pasa-a-mac

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 15:23
by cttan
Hi brokenman,

Thank you for staying on and picking up the lead on Porteus. It is surely my beloved distro.

Although it is not that I'm overly excited about Porteus changing it's base. But I have been staying in the comfort zone for too long.
I know it would be a major overhaul. I will wait patiently for it to come just as I have been waiting for update after 3.1 final.
When would we finalise on the base of Slackware or Arch Linux? How do we do this?
Is there any timeline for the alpha, beta, RC or final release date?

Long live Porteus! :Yahoo!: :beer:

Re: The future of Porteus

Posted: 06 Nov 2015, 15:49
by Tonio
Sorry to hear about the new direction :(
It was a great ride. Slackware has not gone there :( Wonder what will happen to the others Slackel, Austrumi and Salix. Patrick has not gone the way of systemd. Many people liked Arch before but for a while that it went there, they went to other distros and init systems. We will be watching. I wish Porteus the best, still I believe it is not a good decision. I have used systemd based distro Fedora, it works, but I really liked the Slackware philosophy and keep it simple vs a pile of dung. Hope all goes well. At least a few old timers will just stop visiting and using porteus just because of this. Hope fanthom and brokenman don't take it in bad way, but the systemd bug has bitten and is biting more. :( :evil: