Porteus - Portable Linux

Skip to content

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. Join the community now!

Watch Porteus boot in 15 seconds!

The 64-bit edition of Porteus will fully utilize all the resources of a modern computer. Let your CPU and memory run unbridled with the sleek and feature-packed KDE4 desktop!

The 32-bit edition of Porteus will run on old and new systems alike. You won't believe how fast and responsive even an older system can be!

Available for both 32 and 64-bit systems, the Xfce editions of Porteus offer an alternative look and feel with all of the speed and simplicity of the standard editions.

Porteus is one of the fastest distributions on the face of the Earth. On a modern PC, it will boot into the 'lxde' desktop in less than 15 seconds! With the 'copy2ram' boot option, you can copy the entire OS to your RAM, giving you the lightning-quick responsiveness you've always wanted.

Porteus now offers a kiosk edition, which is a minimal system that is locked down for use by the public. Try it now, and take all of the guesswork out of preparing your next customer-oriented project!

Home

Using Pendrive Linux to Install Porteus to USB

Details

Using the Universal Linux USB Installer from Pendrive Linux to Install Porteus to USB

Although installing Porteus to a USB device is a fairly simple procedure, if you are having troubles then perhaps this tool is the answer. You will need to have downloaded the porteus .iso file or you can create a Gzip tarball from existing porteus files using a free application such as peazip.

The following is a list of what you will need in order to set up porteus on your USB:

Universal-USB-Installer-x.x.x.x.exe (get it here)
Windows XP/Vista/7 to create the USB (Win 98/2K WILL NOT Work!)
Fat32 Formatted Flash Drive
PC with a BIOS that can boot from USB
Your Favorite Linux ISO (Get it here)

Once you have these you simply double click on the Universal-USB-Installer-x.x.x.x.exe and follow the prompts and choose Porteus from the list. Your Porteus tarball must be named exactly as it appears in the list otherwise you will not see it when searching your files through the program. You will be asked to choose your USB drive and you porteus tarball. After this everything else is done for you and you should be left with a USB that boots into porteus.

A NOTE ABOUT SAVING YOUR CHANGES IN PORTEUS:

Please note that if Porteus is installed on a FAT32 partition (almost all flash drives are formatted with a FAT32 filesystem by default) and you want your changes to persist between reboots, you must use a save.dat file. More information on how and why to do this can be found here.

Top

Skip to content