Porteus is a complete Linux operating system that is optimized to run from CD, USB flash drive, hard drive, or other bootable storage media.

Porteus is a fast, portable and modular live CD/USB medium based on Slackware Linux.

The distribution started as a community remix of Slax, another Slackware-based live CD (which is no longer actively maintained), with KDE 3 as the default desktop for the i486 edition and a stripped-down KDE 4 as the desktop environment for the x86_64 flavour.

The lightweight LXDE is available as an alternative desktop environment.

Porteus is a complete linux operating system that is optimized to run from CD, USB flash drive, hard drive, or other bootable storage media. It's small (under 300Mb) and insanely fast which allows you to start up and get online while most other operating systems are left spitting dust. Porteus comes in both 32 & 64 bit and aims to keep on the bleeding edge. It also supports several different languages and the user forum has language sections. 


Updates (via Distrowatch):

Porteus 1.0, a distribution created by the user community of the inactive Slax project, has been released. The 32-bit edition comes with Trinity KDE 3.5.12, while the 64-bit variant ships with KDE 4.6.4 (both flavours also include LXDE as an alternative desktop). From the release announcement: "Porteus version 1.0 has finally hit the streets. This lightweight, hard-hitting and lightning-fast portable Linux distribution is now available in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. While aesthetically it is similar to Porteus v09, there have been vast improvements under the hood; the most notable change is the upgrade from LZMA to LZMA2 compression. The use of this new and far superior compression algorithm means that we have been able to pack in even more features while remaining under the 300 MB mark, with an even faster boot time!

Features: Linux kernel 2.6.38.8; userland bumped to Slackware 13.37; refined linuxrc; Porteus package manager."

Download: Porteus-v1.0-i486.iso (250MB, MD5), Porteus-v1.0-x86_64.iso (299MB, MD5).

Recent releases:

  • 2011-06-23: Distribution Release: Porteus 1.0
 • 2011-05-08: Development Release: Porteus 1.0 RC2

Development.

The Porteus project started out as "Slax Remix" at the beginning of 2010 and was started as a community project using the Zen kernel to improve and update the Slax OS.

The community agreed on the new name on the project, Porteus, which was named after "'Portability' and 'Proteus'. 'Proteus' is a "Greeks god of the sea, capable of changing his form at will", according to the naming announcement on the Porteus forum. The project leader commented on the name, "I find this name as a kind of synonym of 'flexibility' adjective. We have portable (small) and flexible (modular) features included in one name: Porteus."

The Porteus 32-bit version uses KDE3 as desktop environment, whereas the 64-bit version uses the newer KDE4, including the Plasma workspace into the Porteus environment. Both versions also offer the LXDE desktop environment as a lightweight alternative.

Installing Porteus to a USB Flash Drive.

Installing Porteus through Linux is similar to installing through Windows. You must have root (super user) priveleges on your system in order to run the installation script.

*NOTE*  You cannot install 64-bit Porteus from within a 32-bit linux system, nor can you install 32-bit Porteus from a 64-bit linux system (unless you are running in a 64-bit multi-lib environment).  This is because syslinux and extlinux are not compiled statically and they require libraries from your running system for the installation.  If this is an issue, you can burn the desired edition of Porteus to a CD and boot from the CD to perform the installation.

Before installing, you must extract or mount the .iso file in order to copy the /boot and /porteus directories to your target device. Some archiving programs are capable of extracting the .iso, or you can simply mount it with the following commands:

mkdir /mnt/loop
mount -o loop /path/to/file.iso /mnt/loop

If you are using Porteus for this installation, you can simply enter:

mloop /path/to/file.iso

And you can then navigate to /mnt/loop to access the necessary files. If you are running from a Porteus CD, you can navigate to /mnt/sr0/ and copy the files from there.

Steps to Install:

1) Insert your flash drive. If a window automatically pops up when you plug it in, click to open the device. This will mount your flash drive and you can see it's path by opening a console and typing:

mount

If the device is not mounted automatically, then you can open a console and type:

fdisk -l

to get the path of your flash drive (e.g., /dev/sdb1), and then:

mkdir /mnt/sdb1
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

(substitute sdb1 with the name of your device if it was listed differently in fdisk)

Make note of the device's name, as this is the device which will need to be modified by a script later in the process.

2) Copy the files /boot and /porteus from the Porteus .iso file (or from a Porteus CD) to the root directory of your flash drive (meaning the files should not be placed inside any other folders on the drive. For example, they should be located at /mnt/sdb1/boot and /mnt/sdb1/porteus, assuming your flash drive is device sdb1, and is mounted at /mnt/sdb1).

3) Open a console and change directories to the boot folder that you just copied into the flash drive, e.g.

cd /mnt/sdb1/boot

Execute the lin_start_here.sh script:

./lin_start_here.sh
*NOTE* If you are not running as root already, you must use the su or sudo command and enter your root password before starting this script, or it will not be able to configure your device properly.

This script will bring up a menu.

4) From the menu, select the 'Install Porteus to...' option that matches the filesystem type of the drive to which you are installing. Most drives are formatted with a FAT filesystem at the factory, and should work with option number 7, "Install Porteus to a FATx partition (syslinux)".  If you have formatted your flash drive to a linux partition (e.g. EXT2, EXT3, etc), then use option number 6 to install extlinux.  Option number 8 will install LILO as your bootloader.  LILO will work for any filesystem type (including NTFS), but it boots up with a text menu instead of a graphical menu like syslinux or extlinux.  Once you have selected your bootloader, follow the instructions given by the script from here, and be sure to confirm that the correct device is being made bootable. This is important as the script will write to the master boot record (MBR) on the first sector of the device from which the script is run. Your flash drive will not be made bootable if you write to the MBR of another device, and it could make it so that your computer will no longer boot (if this happens to you, please read the instructions in /boot/docs/restore-mbr.txt in the Porteus ISO for recovery instructions).

5) After running the install script, you should be able to boot Porteus from your flash drive. Reboot your computer, and make sure that your BIOS is set to boot from the USB device first, before it boots to your hard disk. If you are unsure how to change the boot order in your BIOS, please see Appendix A.

*NOTE* if you are using a Porteus CD to install Porteus on a flash drive, you can use the 'Porteus-2-USB' script, located in the application menu, under System Tools. This useful script automates the installation process. It will format your flash drive into two partitions, copy the Porteus files, and make your flash drive bootable.

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Fuduntu is a Fedora-based Linux distribution that earns its name by its ambition to fit somewhere in-between Fedora and Ubuntu.

Fuduntu Linux is a Fedora-based Linux distribution created by Andrew Wyatt. It is designed to fit in somewhere between Fedora and Ubuntu (hence the name), and, while optimized for netbooks and other portable computers, it is a general-purpose OS.

Fuduntu is considered a "remix" of Fedora; it does not qualify as a "spin" because it contains packages not included in Fedora.

As Fuduntu was originally targeted at the Asus Eee PC and other netbooks, it contains some tweaks to reduce power consumption. Among them, the /tmp and /var/log directories have been moved to RAM disk, and swappiness has been reduced to 10, to reduce the frequency of disk spin-up. In addition, Fuduntu includes the Jupiter power management applet (also developed by Andrew Wyatt), for convenient adjustment of CPU performance settings, screen output and resolution, etc.

The default packages include Nautilus Elementary, Adobe Flash, the Fluendo MP3 Codec, VLC, Infinality Freetype, Google Docs, Gmail, and the nano editor.

Also featured is Likewise Open, which facilitates connecting a Fuduntu machine to a network that uses Active Directory authentication.

The Fuduntu Difference:

• The latest stable Linux Kernel (2.6.39)
• Aesthetically pleasing design
• Unbelievable Performance
• Unparalleled battery life

Updates (via Distrowatch):


Andrew Wyatt has announced the release of Fuduntu 14.10, a Fedora-based desktop distribution: "The Fuduntu team is pleased to announce the general availability of Fuduntu 14.10. This release continues our tradition of small incremental improvements bringing new versions of several important packages and bug fixes to the Fuduntu Linux distribution. Included in this release: Linux kernel 2.6.39.1, Adobe Flash 10.3, Chromium 12, Shotwell 0.10.1; ext4 is now our default file system during installation; support for NVIDIA (akmod-nvidia), and ATI (akmod-catalyst) proprietary drivers; a tool to help simplify customizing your installation; a theme refresh, correcting several bugs and streamlining the look and feel; new background choices; new tweaks to improve Flash playback; bug fixes; the quarterly patch roll-up."

The release announcement.

Download: Fuduntu-14.10-i386-LiveDVD.iso (907MB), Fuduntu-14.10-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso (937MB).

Recent releases:

  • 2011-06-18: Distribution Release: Fuduntu 14.10

OLD_VERSIONS	2011-05-24
Fuduntu-14.10-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso	2011-06-17	982.5 MB	i
Fuduntu-14.10-i386-LiveDVD.iso	2011-06-17	951.1 MB	i
Fuduntu-14.9-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso	2011-03-11	1.2 GB	i
Fuduntu-14.9-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso.asc	2011-03-11	66 Bytes	i
Fuduntu-14.9-i386-LiveDVD.iso	2011-03-11	1.2 GB	i
Fuduntu-14.9-i386-LiveDVD.iso.asc	2011-03-11	64 Bytes	i
README	2011-02-01	312 Bytes

A few of the default packages found in Fuduntu:

• Adobe Flash (licensed)
• Fluendo MP3 Codec (licensed)
• Likewise Open
• Infinality Freetype
• Nautilus Elementary
• Jupiter
• VLC

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FreeNAS is a tiny FreeBSD-based operating system which provides free Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services (CIFS, FTP and NFS).

FreeNAS is an Open Source Storage Platform based on FreeBSD and supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.  

FreeNAS8 includes ZFS, which supports high storage capacities and integrates file systems and volume management into a single piece of software.

FreeNAS is a free network-attached storage server, supporting: CIFS (Samba), FTP, NFS, rsync, AFP protocols, iSCSI, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, and software RAID (0,1,5), with a web-based configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 64 MB once installed on CompactFlash, hard drive or USB flash drive. FreeNAS is currently distributed as an ISO image and in source form. Through version 7.x, it was possible to run FreeNAS from a Live CD, with the configuration files stored on an MS-DOS-formatted floppy disk or USB thumb drive. There is also a VMware disk image available. With the release of 8.x, Live CD isn't currently supported. FreeNas 8.x needs to be installed on a Compact Flash, USB, or dedicated hard drive. Using the dedicated hard drive will use that drive just for the operating system, and files cannot be stored on it.

The minimal FreeBSD 7.2 distribution, web interface, PHP scripts, and documentation are based on m0n0wall. FreeNAS is released under the BSD license. It was reported December 2009 that FreeBSD based development would be halted and put into 'maintenance-only mode' with Debian Linux as the new development target OS. This decision was reverted shortly afterwards, when iXsystems offered to sponsor the further development of FreeNAS.

Updates (via Distrowatch):

Josh Paetzel has announced the availability of the second beta release of FreeNAS 8.0.1: "Hot on the tail of the first BETA I am proud to announce 8.0.1-BETA2. This is the second of three planned betas in the 8.0.1 release cycle. Most of the changes from BETA1 are bug fixes. In particular several bugs have been fixed in the migrations from 8.0-RELEASE. The system was not relabeling ZFS volumes to use the new devicename-independent naming scheme correctly in BETA1. Also the database migration scripts in BETA1 do not migrate NFS shares properly. The upgrade/migration scripts have been improved. In previous versions failure of the database upgrade was easy to miss, and it could leave the system booting to single-user mode with error messages that had nothing to do with the root issue. This has been rectified. If a database migration does fail, the error message will be clear as to what happened."

Here is the complete release announcement.

Download (SHA256): FreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA2-i386.isoFreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA2-amd64.iso (108MB). (102MB),

Recent releases:

  • 2011-06-08: Development Release: FreeNAS 8.0.1 Beta 2
 • 2011-06-03: Development Release: FreeNAS 8.0.1 Beta 1
 • 2011-05-02: BSD Release: FreeNAS 8.0
 • 2011-04-12: Development Release: FreeNAS 8.0 RC5
 • 2011-04-01: Development Release: FreeNAS 8.0 RC4
 • 2011-03-15: Development Release: FreeNAS 8.0 RC3

Features.

   * Protocols: CIFS (via Samba), TFTP, FTP, NFS, SSH, rsync, AFP, UPnP, BitTorrent (protocol) and iTunes.
    * Extensions (plug-ins) for: SlimServer, Xbox Media Stream Protocol.
    * rsync server, client and local sync.
    * Unison support.
    * iSCSI targets feature to create virtual disks.
    * iSCSI initiator.
    * Dynamic DNS client for: DynDNS, ZoneEdit, No-Ip, and freedns.afraid.org.
    * File systems: ZFS, UFS and ext2/ext3 are fully supported, NTFS read/write and FAT32 read/write supported.
    * Hard drive: P-ATA/S-ATA, SCSI, iSCSI, USB and FireWire.
    * GPT/EFI partitioning for hard drives larger than 2 Terabytes.
    * Network cards: All wired and wireless cards supported by FreeBSD 7.2.
    * Boot from HDD, USB key, CompactFlash, CD-ROM + floppy disk, or USB flash.
    * Hardware RAID cards: All those supported by FreeBSD 7.2.
    * Software RAID levels: 0, 1, 5, JBOD, 5+0, 5+1, 0+1, 1+0, etc. (using GEOM and g_raid5). Also RAID-Z and RAID-Z2 (as part of ZFS).
    * 4KB sector formatting support for hard drives using advanced formats such as Western Digital WD10EARS, WD15EARS, WD20EARS, and WD30EZRS.
    * ZFS , the "Zettabyte File System"
    * Disk encryption with geli.
    * Management of groups and users (Local User authentication or Microsoft Domains).
    * S.M.A.R.T. support.
    * Remote syslogd forwarding.
    * SNMP monitoring (Netgraph and MibII).
    * Email log and reporting notification.
    * VLAN support
    * Link aggregation and link failover interface
    * UPS (Uninterruptible power supply) support
    * Apple Time Machine support

Web User Interface

FreeNAS™ 8 features a ground up redesign of the web user interface. 

No mess, no fuss – your server is easily controlled from any web-enabled device. 

Configuration is straightforward and simple, and you can make your changes on the fly.

Zettabyte File System

One of FreeNAS™ 8's most important features is full support for the ZFS filesystem. 

ZFS includes data integrity protection, practically unlimited size caps, cloneable snapshots, automatic repair, RAID-Z, and more. 

ZFS is fully open-source, and is a great way to store and manage your important files.

 Command Line Interface

FreeNAS™ 8 is based on FreeBSD 8.x, and will update and keep current with the FreeBSD project. 

So if you're a savvy user, and prefer to use the command line, no problem! ssh in, and control your FreeNAS™ device from FreeNAS™' customized CLI.

Snapshots

If your data is somehow lost, FreeNAS™ makes it easy to restore from a previously generated snapshot. 

With the periodic snapshots feature, you can worry less about data loss, and use your system stress free. 

It takes far less time than a full backup, but a continuous set of snapshots will provide the same level of protection.

10GigE Drivers

10Gig Ethernet drivers are included in FreeNAS™ 8. If you've got onboard 10GigE, or better yet, a 10GigE card, FreeNAS™ 8 becomes screamingly fast when transferring files. 

This is especially noticeable for video streaming, and multiple simultaneous connections.

Backup and Restore

Remote Replication allows you to copy a snapshot to an offsite server, for maximum data security. 

This provides an excellent disaster recovery service, so even in the worst situations, you're covered.

 

Thin Provisioning

Thin Provisioning is another excellent addition to the FreeNAS™ features list. 

Thin Provisioning allows the administrator to allocate users more space than physically exists in the system. 

When paired with ZFS, it becomes easy to manage your total data pool size, and quickly and effectively grow to meet your users needs as they use more of their allotted space.

 

File Sharing

FreeNAS™ supports many popular networking protocols, and is easy to set up in most home and enterprise environments. 

You'll be up and running in no time, and your users can connect with the protocol of your choice, no matter what operating system they run.

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AriOS is a GNU/Linux operating system based on Ubuntu.

AriOS is a GNU/Linux operating system based on Ubuntu Linux. AriOS comes with many extra applications, multimedia codecs, flash and java plugins, many tweaks and a unique look and feel! AriOS is not just Ubuntu+extra packages.

It has been carefully designed to help you get productive instantly instead of spending a lot of hours configuring your system. AriOS word could be translated into “The Operating System from the Ancient Persia”.

Here are some key features of "AriOS":

· Multimedia-ready (codecs, flash, ...)
· Persian Keyboard layout enabled by default (US English is the default language)
· Tons of extra applications
· Built-in remaster capability
· Extra themes, icons and wallpapers

Updates (via Distrowatch):


Mahdi Fattahi has announced the availability of a beta release of AriOSI am happy to announce that AriOS 3.0 beta is now available for download and testing. AriOS 3.0 beta is based on Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' and comes with a carefully designed and customized GNOME 2 session that uses the elegant Avant window navigator as the main panel (without Unity). Finding files and launching applications is handled by Synapse, the smart semantic launcher for GNU/Linux systems. A detailed and complete release announcement is in the making for the final release. These are a few of the programs you can find in AriOS (all at their latest versions as of May 27, 2011): Firefox, VLC, Nautilus Elementary, LibreOffice, GIMP, Oracle VirtualBox, Pidgin, Banshee...."

Read the rest of the release announcement for additional details.

Download: arios-3.0-beta-IRN.iso (1,237MB, MD5). 3.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring a customised GNOME 2 desktop with the Avant window navigator: "

Recent releases:

 • 2011-05-28: Development Release: AriOS 3.0 Beta

AriOS Review.

So what is AriOS? According to its well-done and nice-looking website, it is a Persian distribution that aims to combine a whole lot of extra stuff with an Ubuntu base to make an OS that is instantly usable out-of-the-box. But doesn't that sound an awful lot like other distributions such as Pinguy OS? Well, that's why I'm trying it out! I tried AriOS on a live USB made with UnetBootin. I didn't install it because, well, an Ubuntu installation is an Ubuntu installation, so I saw no need to do it once more. Please continue reading to see what it's like.

After changing the BIOS to boot from my USB drive and getting past the UnetBootin boot menu, I was greeted by a Plymouth boot splash with the same background and dot style as that of Ubuntu but with the AriOS logo. The boot process happened fairly quickly, and I was then led into the desktop.

The desktop looks relatively sparse at first glance. The background is a soothing blue AriOS-branded wallpaper. On the top-left is a dock-like half-panel. From the top, it has a menu denoted by the AriOS logo, an icon to show the desktop, an icon showing shortcuts to frequently-used folders and drives, and an icon-only task manager with some pinned applications like Mozilla Firefox and the terminal thanks to DockBarX. On the top-right is a small, clean system tray. As it turns out, both the dock and the system tray are powered by Avant Window Navigator.

Maximized windows cannot overlap with the left dock, but because the titlebars of open windows have the control buttons on the left, the right sides of the titlebars are free, meaning the system tray sits nicely on top of the maximized window titlebar. This makes the dock seem a bit like the Unity dock and the system tray like the Elementary Wingpanel; the two together work really well. (Disclosure: I have not tried Unity yet.) One annoying thing about maximized windows is that there's a little sliver of space not used between the left edge of the window and the right edge of the left-side dock. That aside, the GTK+ and Metacity themes are Ambiance with blue buttons replacing orange buttons made for AriOS, while the blue icon theme seems custom-made for AriOS. Overall, the desktop looks extremely elegant.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 is the default browser, and it seems to come with most proprietary codecs included out-of-the-box. Interestingly, Chromium is offered as well. OpenOffice.org 3.2 is included, but along with it, Google Docs and Google Calendar are available thanks to Mozilla Prism. This means that users can also create their own web application containments.

There are a whole host of other applications available in the live session, including but not limited to Ailurus, Ubuntu Tweak, Shutter, VirtualBox, Remastersys, Furius ISO Mount, Blender, GIMP, gThumb, Inkscape, Pinta, Pidgin, Empathy, Geany, Cheese Webcam Booth, Clementine, DeaDBeeF, Minitube, UnetBootin, Y PPA Manager, and WINE. Whew! I'm really not sure why there's a lot of redundancy in applications, evident even in this relatively small list I have given here.

Nautilus is the primary file browser and is present with the Elementary mod. Additionally, Gloobus Preview is present for quick and nice-looking previews, and Synapse is present for searching for files and applications quickly.

Ubuntu Software Center is the default package manager, though of course Synaptic Package Manager is available as well. It worked well installing different packages. That said, the fact that "Ubuntu" is still part of the name gives away the fact that AriOS is an Ubuntu derivative. With the next release, I hope the developers brand it as either "AriOS Software Center" or just "Software Center" (or something along those lines).

As this is Ubuntu-based, AriOS unsurprisingly correctly detected my laptop's integrated webcam, shortcut Fn keys, and graphics card. Desktop effects worked smoothly and without a hitch. As with other Ubuntu remixes I have tried, AriOS used 450 MB of RAM at idle, though this was with Shutter and nicer Compiz effects in the background. This is fairly hefty, so AriOS is definitely not for older computers. That said, AriOS felt a lot lighter and less cluttered than Pinguy OS, which I have tested before as well.

As I copied this file over from the live session to my hard drive, I saw a document about how to get the GNOME panel back instead of the AWN docks. That's a nice little touch for new users.

Well, that basically ended my time with AriOS. As I continued using it, I couldn't help but get the feeling that it was basically just Ubuntu with a whole bunch of applications thrown in. Undoubtedly the two docks give the distribution its own personality. It is extremely easy to use, and I would certainly recommend it to newbies. But for me, I don't think AriOS makes a compelling enough case for itself to get me to switch from Linux Mint, which is my current primary Linux distribution.

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