Looking for a fast, portable and affordable operating system?
You may have found the solution in Porteus. Porteus is a member of the Linux flavour of operating systems which is designed to be portable and lightning fast. It started out as a bleeding edge version of 'Slax' called the 'slax remix' headed by 'Fanthom' and from there 'changed it's form' into Porteus (God of the sea).
IT IS FAST
The option to load Porteus into RAM results in a freakishly fast system that has almost all the functionality of a fully fledged Slackware install and twice the speed. Even when Porteus is loaded from a flash device or locally from your hard drive it is still very speedy -- you are ready to go only 25 seconds (depending on system specifications) after pushing the power button.
IT IS PORTABLE
Porteus is stored in a squashed format resulting in XZM files which decompress very quickly. While stored it weighs in at under 300Mb making it a lightweight contender with the speed of a cat. This is accomplished by stripping down the full slackware install to a bare minimum which is quite a feat. The linux live and boot scripts have been rewritten by Fanthom to increase the speed at boot time and shutdown time.
IT IS MODULAR
Another nice feature of Porteus is the modular design. Unlike other distros where one has a package manager that connects the internet and downloads a package (program), Porteus uses modules. These are pre compiled packages that you activate and deactivate. The traditional 'installation' of a program is now redundant as simply double clicking on a module, causes it to be mounted and injected into the file system ready for use. This happens in a fraction of a second and the application is ready for use. Double click on it again and the module is deactivated and removed from the directory structure. This means that you are only using a program as you need it, and the system is not bogged down with thousands of files that are rarely used. Modules can be downloaded and stored somewhere locally for activation as you require it.
THE PORTEUS COMMUNITY
The Porteus community is a great help to new comers provided you follow the correct etiquette when posting in the forum. Be sure to use the search function before asking basic questions as nobody likes to answer the same old questions over and over again. Especially when the person asking the question hasn't bothered to help themselves by doing a little searching. If you find Porteus doesn't work nicely on your system, find the appropriate thread in the forum and make a polite request for help, giving as much information as possible. Inside the 'Porteus Settings Centre' there is an option for displaying system info (also available in text mode by typing psinfo in a console) which will dump a text file full of system information onto your desktop.
