Porteus Superfly, V 0.2 (pre-alpha) is out!
Posted: 02 May 2011, 19:05
Hi All,
As some of you may have heard, I've been working on a light(er) weight version of porteus. This is primarily a sandbox for me to learn more about linux. However, I know there are some folks who have been looking to trim porteus down, eliminate KDE, etc. So, perhaps my efforts here will be of some use.
link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?cnl35ts5566hkjw
md5sum: 4d60e7735bca2989d3b9a6848d96880a
INFO:
Superfly uses a different X-server than regular Porteus. It uses Xvesa, a tiny, standalone X-server that can be used on almost any hardware. The downside is that Xvesa has no graphics accelleration, so movement is choppy at times. In future versions, I hope to create a lightweight xorg-server, which will greatly improve the look and feel of Superfly.
Superfly comes with two "default" resolutions. One is for 4:3 format monitors (1024x768). The other is for widescreen monitors (1280x800). You can specify other resolutions with the "xvesa" cheatcode. You need to press tab at the SYSLINUX menu, and add (or modify) the cheatcode, using your desired resolution and color depth. For example, 'xvesa=800x600x8' would give you an 800x600 pixel screen with 8-bit color depth. Higher resolutions and color depths will look better, but may not work on older hardware. You can enter "Xvesa -listmodes" into a console to see the other modes that this version of Xvesa can use. The highest supported resolution for 4:3 is 1280x1024x24, and for widescreen, it is 1680x1050x24.
Superfly uses Openbox with fbpanel, wmsetbg (to set the wallpaper), and slim (login manager). Many thanks to crashman, as I stole most of this setup from his tiny-desktop module.
It also has the following applications:
pcman (file manager)
xterm
aterm
leafpad
Beaver code editor
Xarchiver
gpicview
Xpaint
Xpdf
alsaplayer
midori web broswer + flashplayer
Take a look and let me know your thoughts. More than once, I have felt that this project has little merit, because Porteus is already so lightweight, and several other distros exist that are lighter than what I've created, with greater functionality. At this point, it remains my sandbox, but I'll continue developing it if others are interested. That said, all efforts should first go towards the official versions of Porteus and getting them ready for V1.0 final.
I'd to thank crashman (again), fanthom and brokenman, as well as the developers of Slitaz (a couple of the applications, such as midori, have been ported from Slitaz).
Future goals include:
adding a lightweight xorg server, mplayer, and some cd recording software; importing some or all of the porteus-specific applications, such as xpns-tool, porteus-module-tools, etc. (these don't work yet in superfly, and have been removed -- command line tools do work), and cleaning up the countless bugs that I'm sure will crop up.
This software should be considered highly experimental, and not used for important or sensitive work. It is not part of the official porteus project, and I expect that it will remain unofficial.
Thanks, all!
As some of you may have heard, I've been working on a light(er) weight version of porteus. This is primarily a sandbox for me to learn more about linux. However, I know there are some folks who have been looking to trim porteus down, eliminate KDE, etc. So, perhaps my efforts here will be of some use.
link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?cnl35ts5566hkjw
md5sum: 4d60e7735bca2989d3b9a6848d96880a
INFO:
Superfly uses a different X-server than regular Porteus. It uses Xvesa, a tiny, standalone X-server that can be used on almost any hardware. The downside is that Xvesa has no graphics accelleration, so movement is choppy at times. In future versions, I hope to create a lightweight xorg-server, which will greatly improve the look and feel of Superfly.
Superfly comes with two "default" resolutions. One is for 4:3 format monitors (1024x768). The other is for widescreen monitors (1280x800). You can specify other resolutions with the "xvesa" cheatcode. You need to press tab at the SYSLINUX menu, and add (or modify) the cheatcode, using your desired resolution and color depth. For example, 'xvesa=800x600x8' would give you an 800x600 pixel screen with 8-bit color depth. Higher resolutions and color depths will look better, but may not work on older hardware. You can enter "Xvesa -listmodes" into a console to see the other modes that this version of Xvesa can use. The highest supported resolution for 4:3 is 1280x1024x24, and for widescreen, it is 1680x1050x24.
Superfly uses Openbox with fbpanel, wmsetbg (to set the wallpaper), and slim (login manager). Many thanks to crashman, as I stole most of this setup from his tiny-desktop module.
It also has the following applications:
pcman (file manager)
xterm
aterm
leafpad
Beaver code editor
Xarchiver
gpicview
Xpaint
Xpdf
alsaplayer
midori web broswer + flashplayer
Take a look and let me know your thoughts. More than once, I have felt that this project has little merit, because Porteus is already so lightweight, and several other distros exist that are lighter than what I've created, with greater functionality. At this point, it remains my sandbox, but I'll continue developing it if others are interested. That said, all efforts should first go towards the official versions of Porteus and getting them ready for V1.0 final.
I'd to thank crashman (again), fanthom and brokenman, as well as the developers of Slitaz (a couple of the applications, such as midori, have been ported from Slitaz).
Future goals include:
adding a lightweight xorg server, mplayer, and some cd recording software; importing some or all of the porteus-specific applications, such as xpns-tool, porteus-module-tools, etc. (these don't work yet in superfly, and have been removed -- command line tools do work), and cleaning up the countless bugs that I'm sure will crop up.
This software should be considered highly experimental, and not used for important or sensitive work. It is not part of the official porteus project, and I expect that it will remain unofficial.
Thanks, all!