The developers are very close to a stable release

Nov 19, 2014 13:43 GMT  ·  By

Porteus, a portable Linux distro that can run from a USB device, CD ROM, SD card, or hard drive, and that is based on Slackware, has just received a new testing version and is now available for download.

Porteus is not your average operating system. It is designed to be small and very fast, while integrating all the latest packages and updates.

The fact that it's portable allows users to run it from virtually any kind of medium, not just hard disks. Being so small is a big plus for the distribution, which takes very little space and has low hardware system requirements.

This is one of the few operating systems still based on Slackware, which is not the easiest to work with. It's a modular system and it allows developers to only add the things that they really need and nothing else. This is especially helpful because Porteus is usually loaded completely in the RAM memory to allow a much smoother experience.

The modularity of the Slackware system is also seen in Porteus, which uses modules instead of a regular package manager. Getting new modules installed is quite easy and is pretty much handled by a double click on the package.

Porteus 3.1 RC2 has all the cool stuff

The Porteus Desktop Edition usually incorporates all the latest packages, and the current version, even if it's just a Release Candidate, does the same.

User will find that numerous updates have been made to the system, and it comes with lots of upstream changes.

"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."

"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," is noted in the announcement.

The developers are still using the latest version of the Linux kernel, 3.17.x, which means that the system is pretty much prepped to run on almost anything.

A complete list of changes can be found in the official announcement. You can download Porteus 3.1 RC2 ISO from Softpedia.

Porteus with MATE (12 Images)

Porteus 3.1 RC2 MATE desktop
Porteus 3.1 RC2 MATE launcherPorteus 3.1 RC2 MATE installer
+9more