Porteus is intended to be used as a portable system, run from CD or USB memory. The 64-bit version uses KDE or LXDE, and the 32-bit one, Trinity, LXDE, or Xfce (on a separate CD). I tested the Xfce version. The boot screen offers various choices, including copying to RAM for greater speed. Porteus can be installed in frugal mode (i.e. with the live image on HD instead of CD) but the installer will not create a conventional system.

The main programs are Firefox, Abiword, Gnumeric, Mtpaint, Audacious, Gnome-mplayer, and Avidemux; they all ran from the CLI without even the most minor complaint. Codecs were installed and all media files played perfectly, even my ‘mp4 from hell’. It is also one of the few distros that actually uses my USB speakers without having to be told, unlike Ubuntu which won’t use them when I do tell it to.

Extra programs can be downloaded, converted into modules, and stored on some convenient medium. I successfully installed Nano, but when I boldly tried for LibreOffice the module was still being created an hour later, with 100% CPU load.

But there were worse problems. Abiword has no spell-checker. The flash plugin in Firefox is a version which only works with an Intel CPU, not AMD. Switching from a US to a British locale and keyboard involved creating a module. This time it didn’t ask me where to put it, and I couldn’t find it to save for next time. It didn’t work, either. All this could be solved in time, but if you want a portable Linux, why not just get Knoppix?