The most famous of them are SLAX and Puppy.
Unfortunately, SLAX project is no longer active as such. Initiative for further development of Live pocket-size system based on Slackware now came to another team. They call their baby Porte
us. Yes, that is name (Proteus) from Greek mythology. But it also reminded me name from Alexandre Dumas' books when I made review for first pre-release version 0.9.Porteus team announced that version 1.0 of their system is now ready. Of course, this system review should make its way to my blog.
ISO image of Porteus 1.0 is quite small, well below 300Mb. Of course, it can be burned to CD and ran from there. And also you can put Porteus onto USB drive and run from there. I wanted to use second option. Documentation says that I need to copy files from iso-image when it is mounted as loop device or via archive manager. Then script has to change Master Boot Record on the drive.
Unfortunately, Linux-oriented script is not marked as executable, and I could not make it executable. Same issue as in previous (pre-release) version of Porteus. I also tried to run this script as sudo bash lin_start_here.sh, but only got error message
./syslinux/bootsyslinux.sh: Permission denied.
Porteus boot menu offers you multiple options. Main of them lead to Porteus with 2 different Desktop Environments, namely KDE and LXDE. KDE is default one and it boots if you don't use your keyboard for 10 seconds. Let's start with this one.
Porteus 1.0 features KDE version 3.5.12 in 32-bit version. This is Trinity - same version from Pearson Computing as in Trinity Kubuntu.
Once booted, you are presented with single desktop system. It was very strange because usually KDE starts in multi-desktop configuration.
Default wallpaper for KDE (and LXDE too, but more on that later) is in dark grey colours, somewhat gloomy. Luckily, there are three alternative desktop wallpapers included. Not the biggest selection, but bearing in mind size of the distro - that is enough.
If you used to double-click window title to maximize its size or bring it back to normal size, you will need to re-learn in Porteus. Or re-configure standard behaviour. Because Porteus by default shades the window by double-clicking its title, leaving only title itself visible. Unexpected, urgh?
Taskbar panel is transparent in Porteus KDE by default. Having "underwater" wallpaper with transparent panel has its own charm - you can see it on the screenshot above.
Right after start, you can find several icons for running tasks on the taskbar. I'll tell you more about couple of them.
First of all, this is network connections management tool. Double-clicking it brings up the WiCD window. Magically, my network was already listed there. Or not magically? Actually, not, because drivers for my Broadcom 4311 WiFi card were already included into SLAX, and it would be quite logical to see them working in Porteus. All I had to do is to configure connection (add security code) and click "Connect". And it's working!
Another icon on the taskbar panel is in form of USA flag. Guess? Of course, this is keyboard layout switch tool. There are several layouts already activated in default system. Unfortunately, Russian is not among them. But it can be easily cured in configuration utility. This is standard tool from KDE3, nothing new and wonderful. As usual, layout switching option is also available, but combination Ctrl-Shift does not work. KDE3 always has this issue. There was a cure for this in SLAX (to do with configuration files), but I did not try to apply it in Porteus. I can leave it for you if you like...
Of course, taskbar is not the only thing which deserves attention in Porteus. There are lots of applications included.
I'll mention quickly that there are several games for your leisure time.
If you are interested in graphics, then Porteus includes several viewers. Other than that, KolourPaint is the only graphics editor.
Internet tools selection is quite big: IRC tool, messengers, FTP clients - all categories are here with at least one application. Browsers are represented by Firefox (version 4.0.1) and Konqueror.
Konqueror is also file manager. I tried to use it, but was not completely satisfied by its look. Icons on the left panel are slightly blurred for whatever reason.
If we get to multimedia packages, then you can find that KPlayer is default video player and Audiacious is default audio player. Of course K3B is also listed. There are no more players, but there are some other multimedia tools for configuration, ripping etc.
Office applications are represented by KOffice with version 1.6.3 - rather old, but that is what you get with KDE3. KWrite and Kate are also available for simpler text editing.
There are also many other applications in menu. Many of them are KDE-native.
If existing list is not enough, and you want to have more applications, then you can extend your system by downloading more modules. Porteus 1.0 uses new file type for modules, compared to SLAX. It is .xzm. Own Porteus site already gives you a selection of applications in xzm format in Download section. SLAX modules can also be used after conversion, as described in documentation. I'll come to that point later. There is also a tool which allows to work with modules: unpack, activate, convert, merge etc.
Of course, like in SLAX, MP3 music files and YouTube videos worked in Porteus Out Of The Box. Combined with Network connection, set of applications included, this fact proves that Porteus is definitely a system intended for pocket use: plug-and-go!
I had small issue with KDE-native tool KNetAttach, which is intended to mount network drives. It simply did not work for my external network drive. I decided to try manual mounting, of course.
Porteus 1.0 does not have sudo command in default configuration. But there is >su. Password is toor, and it is named on different places, like login screen (which you don't see when booting Live system without save-file by the way)
Mounting from CLI (command mount) worked fine, except for the fact that Russian charset was not recognised. Same issue with mounting of NTFS partition in Konqueror - Russian characters are shown as hieroglyphs. Subsequently, I'd like to notice that Samba package is already included in system by default.
Despite filename issue, all the files from local drive worked perfectly, both audio and video. Of course, issue with filenames also was inherited to file tags.
Another bug (or call it issue) which I found with Porteus 1.0 on my laptop is lack of scrolling function on touchpad edges. I like this feature, like I believe most of laptop users, and would definitely miss it if decided to use Porteus as my default system.
As I mentioned above, Porteus 1.0 has 2 desktop environments: KDE and LXDE. I have already written about KDE version above, now it is time to turn to LXDE direction.
Once booted in LXDE, I saw not very many changes from KDE desktop. Yes, general layout is slightly different. Icon in the left-bottom corner is different. But...
LXDe version contains lots of applications from KDE. That's confusing. For exampe "Other" section of menu includes KDE configuration activities, which are not relevant to LXDE at all. One of them is Keyboard Layout, just to give you flavour.
Talking about Keyboard layouts, I could never find a place in Porteus 1.0 LXDE to configure layouts. If you know the place, please tell me. The difference in keyboard layouts though exists between KDE and LXDE versions. Former does have Russian layout in default set. But I could not find a way to switch layouts, other than clicking on the flag. Same as in previous version of Porteus.
LXDE version only gives you one desktop wallpaper available. Even those wallpapers which are available in KDE, are not available in LXDE.
I often work with KDE, as this is my favourite desktop environment. But I rarely use LXDE. To be honest, this is my less-preferred option among "Big 4" (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE). I used Porteus as opportunity to investigate more about this DE. I was nicely surprised when I saw lots of configuration options for desktop appearance. Probably all they are also available in KDE, but not so concentrated and organized.
Of course, LXDE version of Porteus also picked up my WiFi card driver and activated it. Same WiCD screen as in KDE, and I am connected again.
First of all, I tried to browse network from PCMan File Manager. Yes, LXDE does not have Konqueror, even though it has lots of other KDE-native tools, as I wrote above. My attempts to browse not mounted network folder from PCMan File Manager crashed it.
Of course, mounting with mount command worked just fine, but Russian characters were not shown in the file names in terminal again. As opposite to KDE, where Konqueror failed to work with Cyrillic characters, PCMan showed everything OK.
Same applied to automatic mounting of local NTFS partition. Everything was OK for PCMan, but Russian characters were still not working in terminal (Midnight Commander).
Unfortunately, even having this windy way for persistence finished, I could not make it work. At least, WiFi network configuration was not saved and I had to re-enter security key in WiCD each time I booted again.
Maybe I did something wrong, or maybe system is not fully ready yet... Who knows...
In order to use packages from "old brother" SLAX, you need to convert them. You can do it either via special conversion tool, or select Activate option in right click menu on the file. Conversion itself takes significant time.
As a result, you would expect new item to appear in the menu.
I tried to convert package with Google Chrome (v.8), but was not much lucky. Conversion process worked for few minutes and seems to complete the task. But I did not find anything new in menu. Attempt to call google-chrome from the terminal only gave me an error about missing library.
That's why I was wondering whether Porteus could overcome this issue. Obviously, Puppy developers did overcome it, and did very similar way: by creating a persistence file which has its own (ext2?) structure.
Unfortunately, my experiments told me that my hope was not right. After few system reboots with persistence activated, I managed to lock the only non-root user in the system (guest). For whatever reason, folder /home/guest got corrupted or locked, and Porteus only agreed to log me in as root.
Before posting this review, I re-read my first post about Porteus.
Are there many changes since then? Yes, there are some. For example, Porteus have now fully migrated away from .lzm to .xzm. Performance issue was resolved.
But are these only changes? Maybe, maybe not. These additions added some more headache to developers and users (is it fully compatible with existing .lzm modules?), and other issues still remain. Most important of them from my perspective is issue with save file stability.
But generally speaking, system got some progress since version 0.9.
And that make me hope that next releases will be even better.
Do you want to try Porteus yourself? You can get your own CD with this distribution usng service from Buy Linux CDs site.
Useful links:
Review by Prashanth
Distrowatch page
Official forum
KDE
Porteus 1.0 features KDE version 3.5.12 in 32-bit version. This is Trinity - same version from Pearson Computing as in Trinity Kubuntu.
Once booted, you are presented with single desktop system. It was very strange because usually KDE starts in multi-desktop configuration.
Default wallpaper for KDE (and LXDE too, but more on that later) is in dark grey colours, somewhat gloomy. Luckily, there are three alternative desktop wallpapers included. Not the biggest selection, but bearing in mind size of the distro - that is enough.
If you used to double-click window title to maximize its size or bring it back to normal size, you will need to re-learn in Porteus. Or re-configure standard behaviour. Because Porteus by default shades the window by double-clicking its title, leaving only title itself visible. Unexpected, urgh?
Taskbar panel is transparent in Porteus KDE by default. Having "underwater" wallpaper with transparent panel has its own charm - you can see it on the screenshot above.
Right after start, you can find several icons for running tasks on the taskbar. I'll tell you more about couple of them.
First of all, this is network connections management tool. Double-clicking it brings up the WiCD window. Magically, my network was already listed there. Or not magically? Actually, not, because drivers for my Broadcom 4311 WiFi card were already included into SLAX, and it would be quite logical to see them working in Porteus. All I had to do is to configure connection (add security code) and click "Connect". And it's working!
Another icon on the taskbar panel is in form of USA flag. Guess? Of course, this is keyboard layout switch tool. There are several layouts already activated in default system. Unfortunately, Russian is not among them. But it can be easily cured in configuration utility. This is standard tool from KDE3, nothing new and wonderful. As usual, layout switching option is also available, but combination Ctrl-Shift does not work. KDE3 always has this issue. There was a cure for this in SLAX (to do with configuration files), but I did not try to apply it in Porteus. I can leave it for you if you like...
Of course, taskbar is not the only thing which deserves attention in Porteus. There are lots of applications included.
I'll mention quickly that there are several games for your leisure time.
If you are interested in graphics, then Porteus includes several viewers. Other than that, KolourPaint is the only graphics editor.
Internet tools selection is quite big: IRC tool, messengers, FTP clients - all categories are here with at least one application. Browsers are represented by Firefox (version 4.0.1) and Konqueror.
Konqueror is also file manager. I tried to use it, but was not completely satisfied by its look. Icons on the left panel are slightly blurred for whatever reason.
If we get to multimedia packages, then you can find that KPlayer is default video player and Audiacious is default audio player. Of course K3B is also listed. There are no more players, but there are some other multimedia tools for configuration, ripping etc.
Office applications are represented by KOffice with version 1.6.3 - rather old, but that is what you get with KDE3. KWrite and Kate are also available for simpler text editing.
There are also many other applications in menu. Many of them are KDE-native.
If existing list is not enough, and you want to have more applications, then you can extend your system by downloading more modules. Porteus 1.0 uses new file type for modules, compared to SLAX. It is .xzm. Own Porteus site already gives you a selection of applications in xzm format in Download section. SLAX modules can also be used after conversion, as described in documentation. I'll come to that point later. There is also a tool which allows to work with modules: unpack, activate, convert, merge etc.
Of course, like in SLAX, MP3 music files and YouTube videos worked in Porteus Out Of The Box. Combined with Network connection, set of applications included, this fact proves that Porteus is definitely a system intended for pocket use: plug-and-go!
I had small issue with KDE-native tool KNetAttach, which is intended to mount network drives. It simply did not work for my external network drive. I decided to try manual mounting, of course.
Porteus 1.0 does not have sudo command in default configuration. But there is >su. Password is toor, and it is named on different places, like login screen (which you don't see when booting Live system without save-file by the way)
Mounting from CLI (command mount) worked fine, except for the fact that Russian charset was not recognised. Same issue with mounting of NTFS partition in Konqueror - Russian characters are shown as hieroglyphs. Subsequently, I'd like to notice that Samba package is already included in system by default.
Despite filename issue, all the files from local drive worked perfectly, both audio and video. Of course, issue with filenames also was inherited to file tags.
Another bug (or call it issue) which I found with Porteus 1.0 on my laptop is lack of scrolling function on touchpad edges. I like this feature, like I believe most of laptop users, and would definitely miss it if decided to use Porteus as my default system.
LXDE
As I mentioned above, Porteus 1.0 has 2 desktop environments: KDE and LXDE. I have already written about KDE version above, now it is time to turn to LXDE direction.
Once booted in LXDE, I saw not very many changes from KDE desktop. Yes, general layout is slightly different. Icon in the left-bottom corner is different. But...
LXDe version contains lots of applications from KDE. That's confusing. For exampe "Other" section of menu includes KDE configuration activities, which are not relevant to LXDE at all. One of them is Keyboard Layout, just to give you flavour.
Talking about Keyboard layouts, I could never find a place in Porteus 1.0 LXDE to configure layouts. If you know the place, please tell me. The difference in keyboard layouts though exists between KDE and LXDE versions. Former does have Russian layout in default set. But I could not find a way to switch layouts, other than clicking on the flag. Same as in previous version of Porteus.
LXDE version only gives you one desktop wallpaper available. Even those wallpapers which are available in KDE, are not available in LXDE.
I often work with KDE, as this is my favourite desktop environment. But I rarely use LXDE. To be honest, this is my less-preferred option among "Big 4" (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE). I used Porteus as opportunity to investigate more about this DE. I was nicely surprised when I saw lots of configuration options for desktop appearance. Probably all they are also available in KDE, but not so concentrated and organized.
Of course, LXDE version of Porteus also picked up my WiFi card driver and activated it. Same WiCD screen as in KDE, and I am connected again.
First of all, I tried to browse network from PCMan File Manager. Yes, LXDE does not have Konqueror, even though it has lots of other KDE-native tools, as I wrote above. My attempts to browse not mounted network folder from PCMan File Manager crashed it.
Of course, mounting with mount command worked just fine, but Russian characters were not shown in the file names in terminal again. As opposite to KDE, where Konqueror failed to work with Cyrillic characters, PCMan showed everything OK.
Same applied to automatic mounting of local NTFS partition. Everything was OK for PCMan, but Russian characters were still not working in terminal (Midnight Commander).
Persistence
Porteus can save changes, i.e. work in persistent mode. You need to go through quite simple procedure to create special file, if you want to create persistence file on FAT or NTFS partition. Once set up, you need to manually activate persistence file via cheat code during the boot. It is nice to have persistence option, but I would prefer it to work in Puppy mode, i.e. autodetect the file.Unfortunately, even having this windy way for persistence finished, I could not make it work. At least, WiFi network configuration was not saved and I had to re-enter security key in WiCD each time I booted again.
Maybe I did something wrong, or maybe system is not fully ready yet... Who knows...
Compatibility
I mentioned few lines above that Porteus 1.0 brings in new file format for modules which you can add to your system. It uses format .xzm, opposed to .lzm in SLAX. It potentially gives Porteus users great advantage, because SLAX repository has huge number of available packages, which Porteus itself has comparatively small number.In order to use packages from "old brother" SLAX, you need to convert them. You can do it either via special conversion tool, or select Activate option in right click menu on the file. Conversion itself takes significant time.
As a result, you would expect new item to appear in the menu.
I tried to convert package with Google Chrome (v.8), but was not much lucky. Conversion process worked for few minutes and seems to complete the task. But I did not find anything new in menu. Attempt to call google-chrome from the terminal only gave me an error about missing library.
Stability
I had to drop my experiments with SLAX when I understood that persistence offered by this system on FAT32 partitions (or USB stick) is very vulnerable thing. System itself crashed a lot trying to save changes, and took all the previous changes to unusable state after such crashes.That's why I was wondering whether Porteus could overcome this issue. Obviously, Puppy developers did overcome it, and did very similar way: by creating a persistence file which has its own (ext2?) structure.
Unfortunately, my experiments told me that my hope was not right. After few system reboots with persistence activated, I managed to lock the only non-root user in the system (guest). For whatever reason, folder /home/guest got corrupted or locked, and Porteus only agreed to log me in as root.
Conclusion
Before posting this review, I re-read my first post about Porteus.
Are there many changes since then? Yes, there are some. For example, Porteus have now fully migrated away from .lzm to .xzm. Performance issue was resolved.
But are these only changes? Maybe, maybe not. These additions added some more headache to developers and users (is it fully compatible with existing .lzm modules?), and other issues still remain. Most important of them from my perspective is issue with save file stability.
But generally speaking, system got some progress since version 0.9.
And that make me hope that next releases will be even better.
Do you want to try Porteus yourself? You can get your own CD with this distribution usng service from Buy Linux CDs site.
Useful links:
Review by Prashanth
Distrowatch page
Official forum
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