How a Windows user can install Porteus 5.0 Cinnamon

[Karmi]

Windows 11 Pro is my primary OS, but I test 'n use lots of Linuxes also...Porteus 5.0 Cinnamon is my main 'Working' Linux OS. Here is how I install Porteus 5.0 Cinnamon using only the ISO & two USB's:

1) Used a 16GB fat32 formatted SanDisk USB. Any USB less than 32GBs seems to work well with fat32.

2) Open the ISO file and copy the EFI, boot, and porteus folders to the 16GB USB.

3) Booted the USB to the Porteus Graphical window, then moved down to the "Text Mode" option and selected it. At the "porteus login:" prompt type root. At the "Password:" prompt type toor.

4) Now, at the "root@porteus: #" prompt type startx. Need to be root in order to make some moves later.

5) Used a 32GB SanDisk USB for this next stage...Samsung USBs also work, but some other USBs seem to have issues with the ext4 format. Also, any bigger sized USBs work this way. Using GParted I prep the 32GB USB by creating a new msdos Partition Table. (If you have never used GParted, then it is time to learn. Practice. Practice. Practice. Ask the Forum if you have issues with it.)

6) Then create a 360MiB fat32 partition. This size has worked well for me.

7) Create an ext4 partition using the remaining space on the USB. On the 32GB USB it shows 28.29GiB.

8) Open the 16GB USB's window.

9) In separate windows, open the new 377MB (360MiB) volume window, and the 30GB (28.29MiB) volume window...they are listed under the "My Computer" column.

10) From the 16GB window: copy the EFI & boot folders to the 32GB USB's 377MB (360MiB) fat32 partition.

11) From the 16GB window: copy the porteus folder to the 32GB USB's 30GB (28.29MiB) ext4 partition.

That's it, and Yes, Porteus is incredibly flexible!

No scripts were needed. No Flags had to be added. No "savefile" needs to be created.

This method has worked on three of my test computers. It didn't work on a 12.2” Samsung Chromebook Plus V2 XE521QAB that I have converted to a Linux Laptop/Tablet/Sketchbook.

[nanZor]

Hi Karmi! - also these days, don't be afraid of using much larger usb sticks like 128gb or more!

Typically, at those sizes they can come formatted at the factory in exFAT, but are easily repartitioned to even just a huge single fat32 if you want, although advanced users will probably repartition to a fat32 and another filesystem partition of their choice like you have done. Easily done in gparted for sure.

If coming from Windows, the RUFUS utility can reformat to a huge fat32 "non bootable" if you like - although it seems counter-intuitive to do so.

The advantage of using a huge usb stick - even if your project is small - is that these days they can be affordable, but with all that "wasted space", what you have with the large flash drives are redundant internal controllers, and plenty of memory so that wear-leveling has a huge amount of spare cells to use.

Which means no problem with using journaling filesystems. So unlike the old days when one was tempted to use their 2gb stick from their old camera.

[Karmi]

Hi Karmi! - also these days, don't be afraid of using much larger usb sticks like 128gb or more!

Typically, at those sizes they can come formatted at the factory in exFAT, but are easily repartitioned to even just a huge single fat32 if you want, although advanced users will probably repartition to a fat32 and another filesystem partition of their choice like you have done. Easily done in gparted for sure.

If coming from Windows, the RUFUS utility can reformat to a huge fat32 "non bootable" if you like - although it seems counter-intuitive to do so.

The advantage of using a huge usb stick - even if your project is small - is that these days they can be affordable, but with all that "wasted space", what you have with the large flash drives are redundant internal controllers, and plenty of memory so that wear-leveling has a huge amount of spare cells to use.

Which means no problem with using journaling filesystems. So unlike the old days when one was tempted to use their 2gb stick from their old camera.

Hi back, nanZor! I agree wid using larger USBs these days, and have Porteus 5.0 Cinnamon on 2 permanent 128GB drives (a SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 used on an 8-port switched hub & also on a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 for quick portability), and also 1 on a 32GB Samsung FIT Plus USB 3.1, on the 8-port switched hub, and used mainly for testing stuff before putting it on the main 128GB Ultra Fit. I also have a few 64GB USBs, and have a rack wid 27 USBs hanging on it. Linux OSes don't have many advantages over Windows (IMHO), but portability is certainly a main advantage.

I've piddled wid Linuxes for decades, many I don't even recall now...mainly Puppy & Ubuntu (*NO* more!) after they came out, but started testing more Linuxes about 4 years ago...using mainly spare SSDs. It was about that time that I started having a bunch of Linux favorites, e.g., Fedora Cinnamon SPIN, CentOS & CentOS Stream, Sparky, and FossaPup64 9.5 (always on USB). It was also around that time that I started trying to install my personal favorites permanently on USBs instead of SSDs. Many would not install permanently (or had other issues) on some of my USB brands, but they would install to some SanDisks I had. No issues wid 'Live' USBs 'n fat32, but ext4 seemed incompatable on some brands. For permanent installations, wid fat32 & ext4 both involved, I use SanDisk or Samsung now. Have you ever experienced those ext4 issues on some USB brands?

[nanZor]

I tend to use SanDisk or Samsung too. Provided you don't get counterfeits of course.

I use them in usb and also for SD cards for my machines that can handle that. Using an SD card for Porteus helps free up usb ports so I can sometimes omit using external hubs.

Believe it or not, I tend to leave the *entire* stick in fat32 for Porteus for portable convenience between windows / mac machines / chromebooks.

Porteus' installer freaked me out - you mean I don't need a 3rd party dd burner? Just double-click the iso to mount it, copy the folder/files to my target usb stick, and run the installer from the target device? Eject / unmount nicely.
That's it? Yeahhhh.

[Karmi]

I tend to use SanDisk or Samsung too. Provided you don't get counterfeits of course.

I use them in usb and also for SD cards for my machines that can handle that. Using an SD card for Porteus helps free up usb ports so I can sometimes omit using external hubs.

Believe it or not, I tend to leave the *entire* stick in fat32 for Porteus for portable convenience between windows / mac machines / chromebooks.

Porteus' installer freaked me out - you mean I don't need a 3rd party dd burner? Just double-click the iso to mount it, copy the folder/files to my target usb stick, and run the installer from the target device? Eject / unmount nicely.
That's it? Yeahhhh.

Never thought about them being "counterfeits" tho!? I've purchased mine direct from SanDisk (Western Digital now) and Samsung so they best not be counterfeits...purchase the SD cards the same way, but don't have as many (just two lappies).

Main reason I go the fat32 + ext4 partitions is it saves me from having to create that save.dat (?) file...otherwise I see nothing wrong wid just fat32 partitions. Porteus is incredibly flexible!

[nanZor]

Yes - you just have to trust your source when purchasing. Typically deals too good to be true are counterfeits.

Flexibility is a total asset for Porteus - but sometimes casual thread reading may make it seem like you need a bunch of "Slackware" type knowledge, (a recent poor review miscontrues this) which is untrue, despite the base system coming from it.

The simplicity of getting started is what blew my mind, even though I had decades of experience, meaning that the new user doesn't have to worry about partitioning at all - until they become more advanced.

The primary function is to get the OS on a usb thumbdrive, and if we consider that the basic minimum, Porteus excels even for a Windows user with no experience.

1) Download the iso of your choice. Double-click it to mount it. Copy all the folders to the target usb disk which is usually fat32 from the factory. Run the self-contained installer utility on the target drive. Eject/unmount. Reboot. All contained inside the directions once you double click the iso to mount it. No need to wonder about 3rd party dd burners.

2) Persistence? After boot, run the System > Savefile Manager and create your persistence savefile. After you create it, conveniently, Porteus will automatically bring up a root terminal with a file editor so that you can edit the change needed to point to the new savefile. It even tells you what line to edit and with what context. Save and reboot when done.

If a new user somehow blows it, and wants to edit that file location again - and is not prone to knowing the location of that configuration file, they can just go into System > Porteus Settings Centre > choose the icon to bring down the "Edit Your Changes Location in porteus.cfg" and try again. Save and reboot.

Typically this location can be as simple as
append changes=/mnt/sda1/porteussave.dat (or whatever you named it when you first created it)

This would be the very minimum. Start with a brand new stick, and not something you found in the back of a desk drawer at work if things go wrong.

Anyway, you know all this, but perhaps will help a lurker to get their feet wet. All without specialized "Slackware knowledge" as was recently mis-spoken in a review.

[Karmi]

Anyway, you know all this, but perhaps will help a lurker to get their feet wet. All without specialized "Slackware knowledge" as was recently mis-spoken in a review.

As Ed_P says:

[gnintilgyes]

I agree with the OP which is what I did, after I had to transfer my Porteus MATE installation to a disk twice the size. However, it's not necessary to have such a large "ext4" partition unless the user plans to use Linux far more than Windows and therefore goes crazy installing programs that require a POSIX-compatible file system. I'm able to get by at the moment with 8GB, consumed half of it but a lot of it is used by Wine. I also have three AppImages on there.

If the user still needs to go into Windows, going back and forth to Linux creating documents, then it's a good idea to have a FAT32 partition to receive those documents. On a reliable Linux desktop having a "home" folder with "Documents", "Music", "Videos" etc. could lull somebody to sleep until suddenly he/she has to get back into Windows in an emergency and can't access those files because either he/she didn't create a FAT32 partition on the same disk, or he/she is compelled to use a different disk to hold the documents.

Typically this location can be as simple as
append changes=/mnt/sda1/porteussave.dat (or whatever you named it when you first created it)

I had to add "/porteus" at the end of that entry. Also I didn't ever get a root terminal, but the text editor (on MATE it's called Pluma) which failed to open any text file. Had to go hunting for the "porteus.cfg" somewhere inside "/boot".

I don't recommend small portable disks larger than 64GB. It's that much data which is lost when it decides to break or foul up, or if it's stolen, or if the owner forgot where it was placed. Also even on USB v3.0 and higher media I've found no Linux distro that could copy a 1GB file faster than the claims on the packages. The file manager progress and notifications are misleading, yeah try to eject right after copying! :x

[Karmi]

I agree with the OP which is what I did, after I had to transfer my Porteus MATE installation to a disk twice the size. However, it's not necessary to have such a large "ext4" partition unless the user plans to use Linux far more than Windows and therefore goes crazy installing programs that require a POSIX-compatible file system. I'm able to get by at the moment with 8GB, consumed half of it but a lot of it is used by Wine. I also have three AppImages on there.

If the user still needs to go into Windows, going back and forth to Linux creating documents, then it's a good idea to have a FAT32 partition to receive those documents. On a reliable Linux desktop having a "home" folder with "Documents", "Music", "Videos" etc. could lull somebody to sleep until suddenly he/she has to get back into Windows in an emergency and can't access those files because either he/she didn't create a FAT32 partition on the same disk, or he/she is compelled to use a different disk to hold the documents.

Typically this location can be as simple as
append changes=/mnt/sda1/porteussave.dat (or whatever you named it when you first created it)

I had to add "/porteus" at the end of that entry. Also I didn't ever get a root terminal, but the text editor (on MATE it's called Pluma) which failed to open any text file. Had to go hunting for the "porteus.cfg" somewhere inside "/boot".

I don't recommend small portable disks larger than 64GB. It's that much data which is lost when it decides to break or foul up, or if it's stolen, or if the owner forgot where it was placed. Also even on USB v3.0 and higher media I've found no Linux distro that could copy a 1GB file faster than the claims on the packages. The file manager progress and notifications are misleading, yeah try to eject right after copying!

Good points, gnintilgyes. Windows users have all kinds of options wid Porteus!

My main desktop computer is just for Win11 Pro 22H2 (wid 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 SSD 500GB 'n a XPG SX6000 Pro PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 drives). Two other desktops are used as test computers, mainly to test Linux OSes, but they each also have a Win11 Pro 22H2 SSD that never sees a Linux OS. Have Sata Hot Swap bays where the Windows OS can be turned off or ejected. Backup all Windows 11 OSes using the Control Panel > Backup and Restore (Windows 7) utility. I built those desktops.

For the Linux OSes that I like, those all go onto a SanDisk Ultra Fit or Samsung FIT Plus USB and are plugged into a USB switched 7-Port hub (not the 8 I thought it was!?). Porteus, Fedora 'n Puppy are also installed onto SanDisk Ultra USBs for easier 'n quicker portability. I use Clonezilla to do backup images on the Linux OSes I like.

Data all starts wid main desktop computer, and it has a SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2 where all Data from all OSes ends up on. All Data from that SanDisk EP SSD gets copied to a Samsung Portable SSD T7 USB 3.2, and that T7 is used to copy Data to an old Samsung SSD & to an older SATA 6Gbps HDD (talk about slow!). Never cared for the Windows Backup utility, so this is how I back up my Data now. I'm an old retired man, but my Data will be around even after I'm dead.

Even the Dell XPS 13 'n a converted Chromebook to Linux test lappy have access to all that Data...