@Victor,
As I commented before, I am waiting for Porteus devs to solve some last-minute issues (which, at this point, the devs have probably solved already) in the stable 3.0.
Although http://build.porteus.org/ says "Desktop Web Wizard takes an impact on our server resources and bandwidth..." (which everyone should care about), I think (but I have not tried it myself) that the web wizard would build an "updated" Porteus 3.0 (i.e. with the last-minute patches included). The ISO images located at http://dl.porteus.org/ might need to be updated by the user from inside Porteus.
The Porteus package manager in 3.0, USM (http://sourceforge.net/projects/usm), is new (replacing the prior one in Porteus 2.1), and unfortunately Porteus 3.0 was released with a "glitch" related to USM. Coincidentally, Slacky repos were having a problem (supposedly already solved).
USM has both CLI and GUI alternatives. At the time Porteus 3.0 was released, CLI already supported Slackbuilds.org, and "any minute now" the GUI should support it too.
AFAIK, Porteus 3.0 is based on Slackware 14.0 (not 14.1 yet, although in many cases they should be OK too). So repos and packages compatible with Slackware 14.0 (Salix, slacky,...) should work in Porteus 3.0.
All these details might have some contribution to your current experience (but keep reading for a solution that worked for me).
Regarding the conversion of packages (from .deb or whichever), the dependencies are not to be assumed as "automatically resolved" (as happens with every "package conversion" tool under any distro). So there might be cases where, in addition to converting a package into a Porteus module, some dependency might need to be resolved by adding some additional file(s) (I am skipping the howto at this moment, let's go back to it in a later post if necessary).
Regarding "installation", Porteus is not specifically designed to be "installed". Think about it as if it were PMagic; you don't usually "install" it. You "could", but the main usage is "Live". In addition, Porteus includes several alternatives so to be able to save preferences, packages, documents... (aka “persistence” in other distros), so you can optionally boot it "fresh", or with those preferences automatically loaded. This can be done from the syslinux.cfg (or pressing TAB and editing the line), or by moving Porteus files (modules) to one specific directory. In other words, similarly to Pmagic. (Again, I am skipping the details for now, but they can be found in Porteus's website).
While trying Porteus 2.1 (and 3.0 RCs), and with potential inclusion in UBCD in mind, I have *not* used the Package Manager. Instead, I converted some pmagic's txz packages and put the resulting xzm modules under "porteus/modules/" or under "porteus/optional/". To be clear, there are even more alternatives and I am just mentioning 2 that are similar to what we have done with pmagic in the past.
Another example: under "porteus/base/" you can find "003-lxde.xzm" (among others). If someone wants a different DE, just move that xzm from "base", and replace it with a different module (KDE, XFCE, MATE,...). Do you want a different (or an additional) web browser? Add Chrome's xzm, or Opera's, in the same "porteus/base/" directory. You can do it under Windows if you need to.
So, a user doesn't need to know about USM or packages.
To convert pmagic's tar or txz archives, I have not even used the CLI scripts. Under Porteus' file manager, I right-click a pmagic package, and convert it to xzm. Then I move the resulting xzm to "porteus/modules". While rebooting Porteus, the new module is automatically loaded (then find the icon in the LXDE menu). You could try this with UBCD's extra modules (it worked OK for me), and then you could also try this with pmagic's gparted/clonezilla packages/archives (dl' them from pmagic's website).
By testing these minimum steps, at least you could have a basic idea of how Porteus works (similarly to PMagic in many regards). If some specific package has a problem, then we can tackle that issue in particular. BTW, I have other sources where we can take packages to add/update, if necessary.
I hope these tips help. If there are more questions, just ask (or search porteus site![:)]( "Smile")
).
Regards,
Ady.
PS: I have also added the "devel" xzm module, and I successfully tested it to build a couple of packages from source. It might not be needed for UBCD's users in general, but I thought it might deserve a comment here.
As I commented before, I am waiting for Porteus devs to solve some last-minute issues (which, at this point, the devs have probably solved already) in the stable 3.0.
Although http://build.porteus.org/ says "Desktop Web Wizard takes an impact on our server resources and bandwidth..." (which everyone should care about), I think (but I have not tried it myself) that the web wizard would build an "updated" Porteus 3.0 (i.e. with the last-minute patches included). The ISO images located at http://dl.porteus.org/ might need to be updated by the user from inside Porteus.
The Porteus package manager in 3.0, USM (http://sourceforge.net/projects/usm), is new (replacing the prior one in Porteus 2.1), and unfortunately Porteus 3.0 was released with a "glitch" related to USM. Coincidentally, Slacky repos were having a problem (supposedly already solved).
USM has both CLI and GUI alternatives. At the time Porteus 3.0 was released, CLI already supported Slackbuilds.org, and "any minute now" the GUI should support it too.
AFAIK, Porteus 3.0 is based on Slackware 14.0 (not 14.1 yet, although in many cases they should be OK too). So repos and packages compatible with Slackware 14.0 (Salix, slacky,...) should work in Porteus 3.0.
All these details might have some contribution to your current experience (but keep reading for a solution that worked for me).
Regarding the conversion of packages (from .deb or whichever), the dependencies are not to be assumed as "automatically resolved" (as happens with every "package conversion" tool under any distro). So there might be cases where, in addition to converting a package into a Porteus module, some dependency might need to be resolved by adding some additional file(s) (I am skipping the howto at this moment, let's go back to it in a later post if necessary).
Regarding "installation", Porteus is not specifically designed to be "installed". Think about it as if it were PMagic; you don't usually "install" it. You "could", but the main usage is "Live". In addition, Porteus includes several alternatives so to be able to save preferences, packages, documents... (aka “persistence” in other distros), so you can optionally boot it "fresh", or with those preferences automatically loaded. This can be done from the syslinux.cfg (or pressing TAB and editing the line), or by moving Porteus files (modules) to one specific directory. In other words, similarly to Pmagic. (Again, I am skipping the details for now, but they can be found in Porteus's website).
While trying Porteus 2.1 (and 3.0 RCs), and with potential inclusion in UBCD in mind, I have *not* used the Package Manager. Instead, I converted some pmagic's txz packages and put the resulting xzm modules under "porteus/modules/" or under "porteus/optional/". To be clear, there are even more alternatives and I am just mentioning 2 that are similar to what we have done with pmagic in the past.
Another example: under "porteus/base/" you can find "003-lxde.xzm" (among others). If someone wants a different DE, just move that xzm from "base", and replace it with a different module (KDE, XFCE, MATE,...). Do you want a different (or an additional) web browser? Add Chrome's xzm, or Opera's, in the same "porteus/base/" directory. You can do it under Windows if you need to.
So, a user doesn't need to know about USM or packages.
To convert pmagic's tar or txz archives, I have not even used the CLI scripts. Under Porteus' file manager, I right-click a pmagic package, and convert it to xzm. Then I move the resulting xzm to "porteus/modules". While rebooting Porteus, the new module is automatically loaded (then find the icon in the LXDE menu). You could try this with UBCD's extra modules (it worked OK for me), and then you could also try this with pmagic's gparted/clonezilla packages/archives (dl' them from pmagic's website).
By testing these minimum steps, at least you could have a basic idea of how Porteus works (similarly to PMagic in many regards). If some specific package has a problem, then we can tackle that issue in particular. BTW, I have other sources where we can take packages to add/update, if necessary.
I hope these tips help. If there are more questions, just ask (or search porteus site
).Regards,
Ady.
PS: I have also added the "devel" xzm module, and I successfully tested it to build a couple of packages from source. It might not be needed for UBCD's users in general, but I thought it might deserve a comment here.