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.

[francois]

Linux is linux. The different distributions are quite alike one another, except for their compatibility, size, pasture and the speed at which they operate.

Once you know one, some hesitate to look into the other one.

Porteus is a simplified version of slackware, extremely light and fast. It does not seem so intuitive, but once you know it it does a lot.

Problems with compatibility with hardware, package managing and the extent of the pasture have been there since porteus forking from slax (leaded by fanthom and brokenman). Compatibility with hardware has been the main reason for the forking from slax.

Since then porteus porteus has been striving with the package manager and with the small pasture associated with slackware. Its seems to mature on these two aspects. But there has been recent progress.

We do work with different distro here on this forum as we have some archlinux forks: nemesis (ncmprhnsbl) and aporteus (neko), and some debian, ubuntu (tome and brokenman very short initiatives) clones have been tested and have been adopted by pupy linux (debian dog). And there are ive slackware fork: porteux (fulalas) .

Comparative analysis between distros is well alive and welcome for the small porteus community. With all the choices and the opportunity it offers, its very surprising that porteus is not more popular.

[vinnie]

Today I came across this distro:
https://joborun.neocities.org/
It looks like a 200mb archlinux with all the interface, if I understand correctly no systemd and no dbus.
Maybe it is interesing.

edit: I'm wrong, it's definitely more just that they only provide a minimal image to chroot on and not a full iso

[nanZor]

Special Mention: PCLINUXos

This was spurred actually by my recent installation of a classic "scatter disk" distro, and an additional DPMS power monitor quirk some may not know about. I run the XFCE version, and some may want to see my tip about XFCE power saving here. But here are some ADDITIONAL little tips with this distro in regards to this which smooths things out. Way beyond the usual "move the windows around and see what's in the app store" kind of review.

Without going into details beyond the scope of a Porteus forum, (which I spend most of my time in anyway), here are some tips n tricks. PCLINUXos makes a dandy traditional install to put your Porteus folder into if you want to go that route!

PCLINUXos is a Sysv rolling-release model. It is called the "Boomer" distribution and the simplicity of it makes it popular. Great for grey-beards young and old! Many custom community tools, a mix of debian apt and rpm, liveusb install and tool and much more than I can cover here. A custom repo is maintained, and I can't believe what a job that must be! So hat's off to these guys. Unlike modular Porteus and family, I've really taken to this traditional scatter disk distro for those environments that need that.

TIPS:
You know the traditional routine: Burn or DD the iso and boot from a usb stick. (Unlike Porteus where one simply mounts and copies files over, but we know that).

SUDO: There is no sudo. Use SU or SU - instead in terminals.

Install: During install you'll be given the option to "upgrade" while installing. It is UNchecked for a reason to give you a choice. The default repo is at NLUUG, and perhaps you may not have good connectivity and will desire to change to a faster repo closer to you later afterwards.

Repos: From a graphical standpoint, one can use the traditional Synaptic for repo and application management. Fine. But where do the repo's get set? The usual place, where I tend to manually edit, but whatever floats your boat. Unlike potato chips, you should only have ONE repo set. It is located at

/etc/apt/sources.list

Perhaps make a copy of it. If you have connectivity and your favored repo set, we can update it, BUT if you know Debian, don't get fast-finger memory about it, use DIST-UPGRADE always:

As root, (su or su -)

Code: Select all

apt update
apt dist-upgrade

Things are a little different here since there is a mix of apt and rpm. But don't worry, these two update and dist-upgrade commands are all that most need.

DPMS Monitor powersave: Most modern distros do not include an xorg.conf file. This one does, but one doesn't really need it. It has DPMS disabled, so you aren't annoyed by monitor blanking/shutdown during install! That, and some other little things help to ensure at least a clean install, but afterwards, you don't truly need it! So in my case, I simply delete or remove it after install.

It lives at /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I usually delete and logout or reboot after an initial successful installation. Since I run the XFCE version, these tips (once you remove the xorg.conf file to re-enable DPMS, might prove useful to know. This whole thing prompted this message actually to save somebody some hair.

XFCE DPMS power vs X11 screensave issue fix

LIVECD / LiveUSB: One can very simply create a livecd or liveusb iso of their existing install with nothing more than this as root:

Code: Select all

mylivecd

Once created, you can simply burn or DD this in the usual iso manager to a usb stick. One will probably want to use the graphical tools for mylivecd, some of which you may have to download from the repos, or investigate this cli command if you've installed a whole lotta' stuff so that your iso isn't a total monster that won't fit on a stick! Beyond the scope of the forum here.

Blue-Light, Redshift screen temp:
For those late night PCLinuxOS coding or forum reading, to make it easier on the eyes, one usually wants to change the blue-light intensity and brightness.
I haven't found any redshift, sct or xsct type programs in the repos. But don't worry! I use the Xrandr technique which Porteus forum members here helped to really fine tune!

Redshift or other screen temp

For the tldr's here, I simply use xrandr to identify what the name of my current output is. Then I create two files, one for day, and one for night. Turn them into shell scripts in my home directory. (chmod +x them) Watch your periods and colons. Use xrandr to find the exact output name of yours:

Here are the crude-n-quick values I've memorized, the chart Rava here and others describe in Porteus really fine-tuned it, so see that.

Day

Code: Select all

xrandr --output HDMI1 --brightness 1.0  --gamma 1.0:1.0:1.0

Night:

Code: Select all

xrandr --output HDMI1 --brightness 0.7 --gamma 1.0:0.95:0.81

Anyway, I spend most of my time in Porteus, but wanted to offer these tips to help get someone over the "hump" with a few tidbits of knowledge. Great place to put your Porteus folder into!

[Ed_P]

Special Mention: PCLINUXos

https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=2

[tome]

Mini, 1.5 mb KolibriOS - written in FASM assembly language.
What is worth noting is that it boots up quickly, has DOSBox 0.74-3, znes emulators and some games
https://builds.kolibrios.org/en_US/data/data/
boot menu grub4dos:
set find1=/kolibri
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd %find1%/kolibri.img
kernel /kolibri/memdisk
initrd /kolibri/kolibri.img

Q4os - "known for an addon called XPQ4 which adds themes intended to replicate the look and feel of Windows 2000, XP, 7, 8 and 10"
see: https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/iscreenshots.html