Other Distro's ???

[sedstar]

is it frowned upon to talk about any other distro's?

i just ask, because my first "all in RAM" experience was "lucid puppy"... then "precise puppy". It introduced me to the "all in RAM" philosophy, and NOW i see a lot of similarities between PORTEUS and PUPPY projects in general...

lot of cheat codes
all in RAM
frugal installs
save file(s) for persistence

i also have and was playing with "Slacko Puppy"... and FatDog64 i tried out on my 64 bit broken hard drive laptop, and its like a corvette!

===================================

there just seems to be a lot of "zen" between the 2 projects, porteus and puppy, is the only reason i ask... the main difference i see so far? is that the puppy distros seem centered on more minimalistic desktop environments, smaller/faster...

[Rava]

You sure can chat about any distro here, especially when it comes to live Linux systems.

And sure, in the past Port borrowed quite some stuff from puppy.

Oh, me personally pokes you to check out CorePure64 and TinyCorePure64.

Its modules can be loaded into Porteusl they are also xz compressed, but it uses a different approach to the module creation, you have to follow strict precise rules when creating a new module.

I want to check it out, but for now failed to create the needed palemoon TinyCore module...

But it is amazing how smooth and fast it runs. Sure it uses a very minimalistic X Windowmanager, but pimped that one up graphically quite well! There are flash videos on their site, so you can kinda look at it without even restarting from your running OS!

http://www.tinycorelinux.net/
http://www.tinycorelinux.net/screenshots.html
(Screenshots here are not jpeg but flash!)

Neat one: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/videos/apps.html

Tiny Core Linux

Tiny Core Linux (TCL) is a minimal Linux operating system focusing on providing a base system using BusyBox and FLTK, developed by Robert Shingledecker.[3] The distribution is notable for its size (15 MB) and minimalism, with additional functionality provided by extensions.

I still am amazed how small TCL modules are, compared to similar Porteus ones. I still have no clue why that is, maybe I will learn when being able to create a palemoon TCL module following the TCL rules. Nuff said!

[datruche]

Rava hav you met 'fifth' webkitFLTK browser? for that one should make you smile.

Thank you for that interesting feedback on TinyCore. Makes me wanna give it a deeper try that could be fun

[francois]

@datruche:
How did you stumble on porteus? You have been a long time on arch linux?

[datruche]

Oh, me personally pokes you to check out CorePure64 and TinyCorePure64.

Its modules can be loaded into Porteusl they are also xz compressed, but it uses a different approach to the module creation, you have to follow strict precise rules when creating a new module.

I want to check it out, but for now failed to create the needed palemoon TinyCore module...

But it is amazing how smooth and fast it runs. Sure it uses a very minimalistic X Windowmanager, but pimped that one up graphically quite well! There are flash videos on their site, so you can kinda look at it without even restarting from your running OS!

http://www.tinycorelinux.net/
http://www.tinycorelinux.net/screenshots.html
(Screenshots here are not jpeg but flash!)

Neat one: http://www.tinycorelinux.net/videos/apps.html

True (on a side note vIdeos are ogv no Flash there )
I just tested it, bits less superficialy than I did before. Really felt I met the result of a tender relationship between Assembly (aka Menuet OS) and Modularity (alias Porteus GNU/Linux) --user-centric view speaking.

@françois How I switched to Porteus as (by far)my fav' live OS ? Upon a test of yet another distro.
[My life]
Needed an efficient,, snappy live system for a number of things (like quickly allowing me to work on a very low-pro small laptop and experiment further secure remote workflow). Wished for a change-that-works from the kiss-my ass-always-up-to-date Arch way. Porteus kISS yet polished finition, doc, open-minded forum, and personalized/modularity from the "get it" to "use it", did fit my desires as well as low ressources.

Going with Arch long enough so that I finaly learnt some useful stuff (eg "Since you can't remember everything live why don't you set up some fast and practical --yeah, KISS-- cli information system, dude?"). Gosh, it's been a bit over ten years Arch's my main OS.
[/My life]

/me thinking: we're on the Programming forum and this thread has little to do here.

[nanZor]

Only necro-posting a nearly 10 year old post, because it seems relevant today. And we got the ok from above.

NomadBSD - lightweight freebsd desktop with custom utils designed to run from a usb stick and still supported:

https://nomadbsd.org/index.html

I ran it a year or two ago and was pleased with devs and community. The install was easy, and well described by the devs. Mostly designed to be installed by DD'ed and instructions for doing that with linux, the various bsd's, and even windows on the web page download area. It is an lzma compressed image, not an iso.

It comes in two different filesystems: UFS and ZFS. I think unless you *know* you need ZFS, then the UFS filesystem would suffice. Look carefully at the selection of the image you want to download to get the right one for you.

TIPS: This isn't Porteus modularized or running from ram!!
1) Slow down be patient since you are running from a usb stick. Try a usb-2 port if boot is not detectable. Consult errata and handbooklet (on web and on-board system via browser)
2) Apply the errata for the latest version BEFORE attempting to use octopkg. Note the whitespace between the / character!
3) At the ascii nomad-beastie, you may want to DISable automatic graphic card detection. (option 7). And/or disable syscons, or aspci..etc. Hit spacebar and explore boot options.
4) If graphical shutdown doesn't work, the terminal with the canonical shutdown -h now does.
5) Not every piece of hardware works. As a portable install, the usual tricks apply - no sound? Carry a usb<>headphone dongle etc.

Even though I'm partial to Porteus, I found nomadbsd an interesting and rewarding diversion. Keeps your skills sharp!

[vinnie]

I have always liked distributions that can run fully ram and persistent, I find them in many ways safer and better performing, so here is a list of the ones I know (I also repeat those already included for completeness):

Tinycore:I was a user of tinycore (or core) quite a few years ago. It is a nice distro however its biggest problem is that there is no unified management of package build scripts. This means that every time there is a major version change, many packages stop working and if the maintainer does not create a new version of the package, the package is lost.
And in fact in reality it is a distro where the repository is almost nonexistent. (trivia: the creator Robert was a major developer of damn small)

Alpine:A nice distro, unlike tinycore the repository is well maintained. However it is a distro oriented to technical users, there is not a very user friendly community and I noticed little availability even in bug reports. The biggest problem is musl instead of glibc, it is not necessarily a problem however you have to get used to less software compatibility.

Porteus: I have known this distro for a long time, however, I don't know why I had the perception that it was too difficult to try. I've been using it recently but, so far it seems very fast and efficient and things are standard. One thing I noticed different from the previous two is that there is no management of what to save in the saveFile manager.

EasyOS:I have tried it little, it is a relatively recent distro from the same creator of puppy and if it did not inherit the same style (I never liked it because it was too messy) it would be promising. It supports containerization of programs and conversion of packages from other distros.

Slax: I haven't tried it, it seems to be based on debian or slackware, I read that it is the ancestor of porteus.
Slitaz:Another historical distro, however, I do not remember if I have never tried it.

[Kulle]

Hi vinnie,
when you get used to a distro, you should stay with it.
Trying out other distros takes unnecessary time.

I've gotten used to Porteus/PorteuX and I'm sticking with it.
I became aware of Porteus 10 years ago (!) through this article:

https://apfelböck.de/surfsystem-porteus ... nd-sicher/

It says: "The Porteus project is the very first choice if you are looking for a transportable, superbly fast and customizable surfing system"

And the Porteus community is also the very first choice.

[vinnie]

I'm no really brillant, I need time to understand if I like a distro or better I need time to find problems

[nanZor]

Spending time with other distros is good training to think outside the box, which you can bring back home to your own use of Porteus(X)/Nemesis.

With antiX (mainly for usb sticks too), you become a ram zen-master. There are like 8 ways to choose upon boot:

*Root on disk, Home (guest in porteus) in ram
*Root in ram, Guest on disk
*Root on disk, Guest on disk (a single instance, or split)
* more....

You get the idea. One better read the faqs! And the standard is no DE, just a custom IceWM. What they've done there - simply wow! Gorgeous VT framebuffers..

But to each his own. Expand your mind - become ONE with it.