General newbie questions about Porteus

Post here if you are a new Porteus member and you're looking for some help.
nemo
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General newbie questions about Porteus

Post#1 by nemo » 08 Jun 2015, 11:46

Hello.

I am a desktop PC user, mainly accustomed to Windows, but even there I'm a non-tech, just an average user. I am a newbie to Gnu/Linux, used a bit of Mint already and everything looks pretty so far, enough to make me leave Windows behind...

Why am I here? First, I'm sorry to say, but on the Mint forums I could hardly get friendly advices. Useful maybe, those that I could actually understand, but not very friendly, since they already assumed I'm all of a sudden familiar with Linux somewhat beyond newbie level.

It's not that I can't use the terminal, read some FAQs, or follow instructions, but there are very few newbie guides and if I use a terminal command I'd like to know what I'm actually doing.

Second reason, is that I've read nasty things about systemd and decided to try some Linux distros that don't use systemd.

I'm willing to learn, as long as the instructions are clear, step-by-step, and don't expect me to be a guru over night...

Ok, after reading Porteus's FAQ and rummaging through some tutorials I've found on the website (I didn't understand some of the concepts in there yet), I still have some questions:

1. If I install Porteus on the internal hard disk, would I be able to work with files and folders just like in Mint? I mean, could I create a new folder or a file, edit it, save it and after a system reboot would my file still be there? Cause while trying to make sense of the tutorials, I've encountered some strange things about having to save files in a different way than a usual operating system...

2. If I choose the 64bit version, could I run Wine and PlayonLinux? I've read something about having to extra install/configure some 32bit libraries, is that still the case in this last version? Should I even attempt such a thing, could I somehow mess the stability of the system, or I'd better go with a 64bit distro that already has those libraries pre-installed?

3. How stable and bug free is Porteus? How much does it differ from Slackware in this regard? I want a system for long term use, as rock stable as possible, and I don't mind not having the latest version of some software, as long as security fixes come into regular updates. Is that the case with Porteus?

4. Other apps I need are ClamAV, Subtitle Editor and Ekiga or Jitsy. Will I be able to install them from the repositories?

5. I'm also considering Vector Linux. Could you please draw a short comparison between Porteus and Vector? Some pros and cons?

................

Thank you.

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Re: General newbie questions about Porteus

Post#2 by Bogomips » 08 Jun 2015, 12:03

What's being asked seems pretty tall order. :) francois normally takes newbies by the hand, but he might already have gone on vacation for a few weeks.
nemo wrote:Second reason, is that I've read nasty things about systemd and decided to try some Linux distros that don't use systemd.
Please see Porteus systemd debate before writing off systemd. :wink:
Linux porteus 4.4.0-porteus #3 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jan 23 07:01:55 UTC 2016 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) 140 Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) MemTotal: 901760 kB MemFree: 66752 kB

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Re: General newbie questions about Porteus

Post#3 by Ed_P » 08 Jun 2015, 16:26

nemo wrote:1. If I install Porteus on the internal hard disk, would I be able to work with files and folders just like in Mint? I mean, could I create a new folder or a file, edit it, save it and after a system reboot would my file still be there? Cause while trying to make sense of the tutorials, I've encountered some strange things about having to save files in a different way than a usual operating system...
I've never worked with Mint so I can't compare the two but yes you can create files and have them there after a reboot. Two considerations involve the format of the hard drive. If it is a Linux format everything is save normally. If it is a Windows format, FAT32/NTFS you can still create files, edit them and write them to the hard drive and they will be there when you reboot. But changes to the Porteus system files and folders won't be. To resolve this you create what is known as a Porteus save.dat file, which is saved on the hard drive like your other files.
2. If I choose the 64bit version, could I run Wine and PlayonLinux? I've read something about having to extra install/configure some 32bit libraries, is that still the case in this last version? Should I even attempt such a thing, could I somehow mess the stability of the system, or I'd better go with a 64bit distro that already has those libraries pre-installed?
My system is 64-bit and I run Wine on it, via PlayonLinux, but I don't remember if I needed 32-bit libs or not. As for making changes and messing up your system there are ways to minimize that from happening.

Hope this helps.
Ed

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Re: General newbie questions about Porteus

Post#4 by francois » 10 Jun 2015, 14:00

For an explanation on the necessity of compat32 (multilib), see:
http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/dok ... e:multilib

To find the pertinent text to wine, search the page for wine.

For porteus, here is multilib32 for porteus 3.1 64bit:
http://dl.porteus.org/x86_64/current/extras/
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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