Porteus future

[philanc]

Hi Porteus team and fans,

This is my first time here. I have been lurking around (and using) Porteus for quite a long time, and first, want to thank the team for this great distribution. I really like the minimal yet polished Porteus.

My understanding is that the Porteus team tries to develop a sustainable business model based on Porteus Kiosk and associated services (customization, timely updates).

I also understand that (1) Porteus Kiosk is based on Gentoo, and (2) a community vote has concluded that Porteus should continue to be built on Slackware.

Given the limited resource of the Porteus team, and the obvious need to focus first on paying customers, which means the Gentoo-based Porteus Kiosk, what is your view on the future of the Slackware-based Porteus?

Do you plan to rely on the community for Porteus updates? or keep developing both? or switch to the Gentoo-based platform for Porteus in the future?

I like Slackware, but I'd rather see a lively Gentoo-based Porteus than a slowly dying Slackware-based one...

TIA

Phil

[fanthom]

hello philanc,

some clarification and answer to your questions below.

My understanding is that the Porteus team tries to develop a sustainable business model based on Porteus Kiosk and associated services (customization, timely updates).
this is correct but i'm the only one who maintains the kiosk and gets the profit from its commercial services. kiosk contributes to porteus.org only with DuckDuckGo income (according to Google Analytics kiosk reached 66% popularity of the desktop edition).

I also understand that (1) Porteus Kiosk is based on Gentoo, and (2) a community vote has concluded that Porteus should continue to be built on Slackware.
this is correct

Do you plan to rely on the community for Porteus updates? or keep developing both? or switch to the Gentoo-based platform for Porteus in the future?
we plan to keep developing both.

Gentoo is perfect for kiosk as kiosk uses very limited number of packages which are relatively easy to maintain. Also - Gentoo is developed in a 'rolling release' model which meant it delivers updates more often than Slackware.

Slackware is perfect for desktop edition as we can use upstream repos full of premade packages. if we switch desktop edition to Gentoo then we have to compile every package ourselves and thats a lot of work.
this is the reason we are so thankful to Slackware itself and 3rd party Slackware repo maintainers.

I'd rather see a lively Gentoo-based Porteus than a slowly dying Slackware-based one...
Slackware is live and kicking new version should be out around the summer and hopefully Porteus Desktop 4.0 just after it.

[philanc]

some clarification and answer to your questions below.

Thanks for your detailed response.

Do you plan to rely on the community for Porteus updates? or keep developing both? or switch to the Gentoo-based platform for Porteus in the future?
we plan to keep developing both.

Yay! Good to know.

I'd rather see a lively Gentoo-based Porteus than a slowly dying Slackware-based one...
Slackware is live and kicking new version should be out around the summer and hopefully Porteus Desktop 4.0 just after it.

I didn't mean that Slackware was slowly dying I was just afraid that Porteus, not being based on the same platform as the Kiosk, could be slowly dying. But your post addressed this concern: More pre-made packages with Slackware for Porteus, and more frequent updates for the Kiosk with Gentoo. It makes a lot of sense.

Thanks again

Phil

[brokenman]

My understanding is that the Porteus team tries to develop a sustainable business model based on Porteus Kiosk

Just to clarify ... Porteus is not a business. It is a non profit community driven project. It existed LONG before the kiosk version which is a spin off project based on a completely different OS but using the base modularity of the Porteus design. Fanthom is the project leader of Porteus and the sole maintainer of the Kiosk project. It's good to see the kiosk version is gaining such momentum. In my opinion both not going to die anytime in the near future.

[fanthom]

sorry - i have used wrong words. to clarify things (once again):

My understanding is that the Porteus team tries to develop a sustainable business model based on Porteus Kiosk and associated services (customization, timely updates).
i'm the only one who maintains the kiosk and gets the profit from its commercial services. porteus kiosk does not contribute to porteus.org in any way except for DuckDuckGo income (according to Google Analytics kiosk reached 66% popularity of the desktop edition).

in theory community still have to pay the bill for the porteus.org server (June is the deadline when we need to collect 600$ to cover years 2015/2016):
http://wishlist.porteus.org/
but we are hoping that DDG income will cover it entirely.

even if i decide to go fully commercial with kiosk/other spins then desktop edition will be available free of charge as always.

[goossbears]

FWIW, I'm also glad Porteus will be around for awhile!
The Debian-based liveCD/liveUSB distros I'm most familiar with are

• KNOPPIX
• Finnix
• Grml

and way way back when, DamnSmallLinux

Slack-based Porteus is just as good and serves my own purposes quite well to become somewhat more advanced in Linux (e.g., to eventually learn LFS?), so thanks to the Porteus maintainers from me as well.