Build your own Linux Distro bootable from RAM | Hacker News Reader

Build your own Linux Distro bootable from RAM

build.porteus.org

67 pointswocp16 comments

Worked for me. Considering how the HN effect hasn't brought down this service I wonder if they pregenerated the ISO images. Realistically, you could do that for all the basic combinations of user selections since there are relatively few of them and then patch in the advanced customizations at download time if needed. (Although mkisofs is pretty cheap to run, so depending on your platform you could probably get away with no pregeneration.)

It's also interesting to see a distribution offer Razor-qt as the default desktop -- I'm looking forward to what comes out of Razor-qt's collaboration (merger) with LXDE.

A few similar services:

* Slax (a Slackware-based live CD Linux distribution) offers a build service where you can select individual packages (http://old.slax.org/build.php). I'm not sure if it has been deprecated for good with the new version of Slax being developed but it still works. Edit: From how it works it looks like Porteus was forked from Slax. I can't access their website proper right now but googling around confirms this.

* SUSE Studio (http://susestudio.com/) generates highly customizable live media images and VMs of openSUSE. Their gallery (http://susestudio.com/browse) is a nice feature. It requires registration.

Edit: I mistakingly wrote that Razor-qt is merging with XFCE rather than LXDE. Fixed.

Edit 2: While it's not strong evidence their download links (i.e., http://build.porteus.org/dl/$HASH/Porteus-RAZOR-v2.1-(i486|x...) suggest they don't pregenerate ISOs but they may cache them.

Razor-qt is merging with LXDE, not XFCE. This is due to the similar goals of the two projects.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/razor-qt/PNvkoidV2Ik

You can set passwords for guest/root, so I think they might run mkisofs on the fly as you download. I'm sure they could cache the ISOs for more popular options without passwords though.

It's kinda cool that i can download a customized iso, but why exactly would I need this? I'm sorry either I'm misunderstanding it or tinycore (http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/) [Full disclosure: no affiliation whatsoever] already solved the usecases i see for this. And in my opinion way better just without a fancy online form. I can stick in their packages in an image way more granular than your form.

Edit: I opened porteus.org now and have found a description on what porteus linux is.

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.

Would have liked to read that pitch on the build page too so I knew what I was looking at :) I do see some usecases now.

Most folks who are on the build page are there because they are already sold. I think the pitch is in the right place.

A back link probably wouldn't hurt though!

This is cool, I could consider booting up my old netbook again if I can just use flash. One problem I foresee though is that the keyboard layouts are some short list. I don't know which "Canadian" keyboard layout it is, there are at least 3 common variations. I hope they can fix that so we can select from the full list of keyboards.

I have it one the MicroSD in my Android phone. I also have MicroSD-to-USB3 card reader on a keychain. Easy to boot any PC. Running from RAM is fast and leaves no traces on the host PC. One feature especially worth mentioning, is that you can have AMD and NVIDIA drivers in /porteus/optional and depending on the detected GPU, porteus will load the required driver. So far, it worked everywhere except for some Atoms (netbooks) with PowerVR GPUs.

A choice to create a bootable USB image would be nice, since despite the existence of some automation tools, this is a hurdle that puts off some people interested in exploring RAM-resident Linuxes.

Seems like they integrate a fitting tool:

http://www.porteus.org/component/content/article/8-informati...

Though I had preferred if one could just dd the iso onto the usb-stick, like it is possible with Ubuntu's images.

simply extract files from .iso with 7zip or winrar and copy to USB and run small utility to make it bootable (in the subfolder /boot choose Installer-for-Windows.exe or Installer-for-Linux.com ) More info here http://www.porteus.org/tutorials/26-general-info-tutorials/1...

Agreed. I thought at first the ISO I downloaded WAS a USB image. And why the linux installer script ends in .com and not .sh is beyond me. But all that aside, this is a really interesting project!

A heads up to the Porteus site operator, if they read this: HTTPS Everywhere redirects requests to https://porteus.org, which reports the following error: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long.