Porteus 2.0 Arrives, Replaces Trinity

While wandering around trying to see what news catches my eye today, I spotted the release of Porteus 2.0. Porteus is a live distro based on Slackware, featuring a variety of desktop and software choices. Version 2 is based on Slackware 14 and offers of KDE 4, LXDE, Razor-qt and Xfce desktops.

One of the first things you'll notice is how small the download of Porteus 2.0 is. Both 64-bit versions are 228 MB or less and when booted both Xfce and KDE are offered in the boot menu. The boot reminds me of Slax more than Slackware and in fact, Porteus seems to handle software packages, additional drivers, and such much like Slax with compressed tarballs called modules.

The KDE 4 desktop is attractive and unobtrusive and includes an adequate starter set of apps. Perhaps the most intriguing part of Porteus is its original set of tools. The Porteus Control Centre allows users to set they system settings and customize various aspects of Porteus. Also of interest is the no-nonsense installer and package installer. The package installer allows one to search and install from various sources in addition to Porteus repositories. These include Slackware, Slackbuids, Salix, Alien, and Debian.

The release announcement said version 2.0 features:

- Linux kernel upgraded to version 3.7.8
- Razor-qt replaced Trinity as the Desktop Environment for the 32-bit
- KDE 4.9.5 and Xfce 4.10
- firefox upgraded to version 18.0.2

See the announcement for more details and download links.