Useability

[nanZor]

That works too! Thanks for the tip.

I guess this is a "development" thread, so I'll pull out my poets pen again, and what makes Porteus so attractive. It is nicely polished, but there are enough areas for the end-user to turn a few wrenches to make it their own.

If one thinks about it, all the little tweaks we do could be considered "research" and not just striving for a finished "product".

That is, there is more than one way to solve an issue. Some are elegant. Some are robust. Some are not so pretty, but function 99% of the time. Express your creative juices. Much like the original OG's back at ATT did, when unconstrained by marketing or popularity. More or less they eschewed the "big system mentality" which they found challenging, but very limiting when working with the Multics predecessor.

If one came up through the ranks for consumer-level PC's, one is more or less goaded into finding the "one true way", or which is "best". Marketing, not research.

Porteus is like the perfect porridge. I'll put my love-beads and fake unix-beard on, and slink back out.

[Karmi]

I guess this is a "development" thread, so I'll pull out my poets pen again, and what makes Porteus so attractive. It is nicely polished, but there are enough areas for the end-user to turn a few wrenches to make it their own.

If one thinks about it, all the little tweaks we do could be considered "research" and not just striving for a finished "product".

That is, there is more than one way to solve an issue. Some are elegant. Some are robust. Some are not so pretty, but function 99% of the time. Express your creative juices.

Porteus is like the perfect porridge. I'll put my love-beads and fake unix-beard on, and slink back out.

Great Porteus 'poem'! I tried Porteus 3-4 years ago - in a personal contest for a portable OS. Puppy Linux won...easily. I've learned more over the past 3-4 years, and now look for Linux OSes that at least offer a root user option ("Passwordless" future is here!) & are portable (Windows OSes lack true 'Portability'). Gave Porteus 4 'n 5 Cinnamon a try recently, and 5.0rc3 has beaten both Fedora Cinnamon SPIN & Puppy 9.5 for what I call my 'Working' Linux OS.

Maybe not as Portable as Puppy, but it is *PLENTY* flexible, has the most helpful forum I have ever seen, and it offers both the Cinnamon & KDE Plasma DEs (desktops that Win users can easily adjust to). Puppy offers a decent desktop, but JWM just seems too busy 'n too much stuff packed into it. Great for portability 'n rescue projects, but not a good 'Working' Linux OS for someone who uses Linux mainly as a secondary or 'Companion' OS to Windows. Fedora 32/33/35 have been my main Linux 'Working' OS for a few years now, but is pretty big 'n wants updated all the time. Used Ubuntu for years before that...well, mainly just piddled wid it.

Wid some piddling, forum help, turning a 'few wrenches' here & there, quite a bit of 'research', some luck, and some excellent flexibility by Porteus I have created the best Linux 'Working' OS I have ever used. Heck, wid the help of YUMI UEFI my 'Working' Porteus is on its *OWN* laptop! Another 'Working' Porteus is on standby...on a 128GB SanDisk Ultra USB.

Oh, almost forgot the other 'Working' Porteus...on a 128GB SanDisk Ultra Fit USB plugged into a Sabrent 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub with Individual LED Power Switches that is attached to my main Linux testing computer - has 3 different kinds of SATA Hot Swap Bays, a Gigabyte Z390 UD MoBo, 32GB (4 x 8GB) memory kit, Intel® Core™ i9-9900 Processor, GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER™ GPU, and a DVD-rom - all in an Antec Sonata Proto case. BTW, I used the new Porteus 'Lappy' more today...for quick 'n easy stuff.

[nanZor]

Pretty awesome - a lot depends too on how the community holds together. Slitaz is pretty cool too, but couldn't seem to make the jump to modern kernels, although there is a bit of renewed interest.

Ed's tip got me thinking - I've been longing for a "Busybox" flavor of Porteus, but now he's got me thinking- instead of me doing massive infrastructure changes, I'm going to research how well I can merely unarchive one of the standard xzm modules, insert the latest busybox, and make it back into a module and then later rely solely on it's own ash shell and utils. We'll see, but my skills aren't that sharp. Most likely catering to just one guy (me), so to get that done, guess I gotta' roll up my sleeves and just do it.

But yeah, great fun and personally rewarding with Porteus regardless of how it's put to use.

[Karmi]

Ed's tip got me thinking - I've been longing for a "Busybox" flavor of Porteus, but now he's got me thinking- instead of me doing massive infrastructure changes, I'm going to research how well I can merely unarchive one of the standard xzm modules, insert the latest busybox, and make it back into a module and then later rely solely on it's own ash shell and utils. We'll see, but my skills aren't that sharp. Most likely catering to just one guy (me), so to get that done, guess I gotta' roll up my sleeves and just do it.

Yeah, I don't think a "poets pen" works well at creating flavors.