I’m currently using Ubuntu and I want try a different distro because I have an older computer and Ubuntu is pretty slow. So far the only one I’ve tried was Porteus and while it does boot and load apps very quickly I had an issue where Porteus wouldn’t boot if it was installed on top of ext4 but would boot fine if it was installed on top of fat32, which is also another potential problem because Porteus requires a save file for persistence when using Windows filesystems. If there is a problem where my computer can’t boot with an ext4 filesystem, Ubuntu doesn’t have this problem because sda1/2/3 all use a different filesystem.
If I’m correct on this, would I be better off trying Porteus on ext3/2 and hoping it works or just use it with fat32 and have a separate partition formatted for ext4 to serve the same purpose as sda3 in Ubuntu and possibly store the save file (if I have the correct understanding of how save files work).
Also, I would just use NTFS but not only have I heard that it has issues with Linux, I’ve had issues using it with Linux, so I’m using fat32 for stability.
Why porteus? That seems like a very specialized distro, and the fact that it’s optimized to run on usb sticks might have something to do with the filesystem issue. If this is just for a laptop or desktop then I’d recommend running a mainstream distro meant to be used on a pc. If you do that then ext4 will work fine. If you’re comfortable with ubuntu and not too freaked out by working in the terminal then why not try endeavourOS or something along those lines?
Well, I’m looking for a Linux distro that boots faster and loads apps faster than Ubuntu and Porteus performs well from the little bit of testing I did. I understand that I should use a more mainstream Linux distro but to be honest, I actually don’t remember why I have Porteus. I just remember it being the first Linux distro I ever tried and most of the distros in the list of lightweight Linux distros on Wikipedia are portable, so I figured I wouldn’t be wrong to try Porteus, even if I don’t end up using it.
If there is one that’s better, I wouldn’t know. I know I wont be using Porteus because for some reason I can’t get the WiFI adapter to work but I still wanted to use Porteus so I can get some experience using that type of distro in case I end up using something similar. I don’t like to just ask for a different distro because I know that the answers I get might not be 100% what I want and will just be what they think is the best for me. I’d rather find one on my own but the problem is that the documentation for Linux distros is so disproportionate that, unless I manually look through every single distro that exists (assuming they all have the information I need), I can only find lists that contain information for seemingly random distros.
That looks like it’s meant to be stopped on a flash drive for quick tinkering, so fat32 would probably be the way to go.
Having said that I’d rather recommend tinyCore for that purpose instead personally. I’d also really like to point out neither that or porteus seem to be made for general use. If you are wanting a full desktop or laptop install they are both going to be absolutely terrible for that purpose
Well, I’m looking for a Linux distro that can boot and load apps faster than Ubuntu but I’m having issues finding Linux distros that can do that without being portable. Right now, I’m actually going to try Absolute Linux, I just tested Porteus because I had it for a reason I don’t actually remember.
Sounds like just a boot partition issue. you can set up a separate boot vs root vs home on pretty much all distros
Ok but that doesn’t answer my question. Should I use ext3/2 as the boot partition or fat32?
Boot-partition is always fat32. Using ext4 for root-partition will give you the most speed what a filesystem can. It is way faster than NTFS.
Your issues sounds like a hardware problem. How much ram do you have? A minimun of 8 gb is a must. Do you have a ssd storage?
You want a fat partition for boot,the rest can be whatever file system suits you
The problem is that I can’t do that, when it installs it completely reformats the drive to ext4 and doesn’t give me the option for anything else.
Ext4/3/2 should be fine for /boot with most bootloader (it’s best to skim their docs for filesystem compatibility). If you’re booting UEFI, you’ll still need a FAT32 /boot/efi (or wherever you want to put the efi partition).
I wasn’t asking if Linux could boot with ext3/2, I was asking which one was better for booting but it looks like you unintentionally answered that anyways because my computers bios only boot through UEFI.
You shouldn’t use fat32 for /boot unless there’s no other choice. Use ext2 for /boot if all you care about is speed. You lose journaling and probably other features, but you don’t pay the performance penalty, either.
Porteus appears to be a completely different deal than a regular distro you install - it works with the requirement of being portable and meant to live on a USB stick where you probably want to share the space with FAT32/NTFS/exFAT for file transfer as well and generally being able to just plug it into any computer. It probably has a bootloader configured with the expectation of a FAT32 filesystem with the persistence file living on it.
Most installed distros will be perfectly happy with ext4 - it’s not a filesystem problem it’s a how it boots problem. You’ll probably find that most distros that are not designed for portability/running on a USB stick will have no problems with ext4 at all.
If you want a portable distro on a USB stick that’s installed properly, you can partition the USB stick to have a FAT32/NTFS/exFAT for storing files and another partition for the distro itself. Generally, distros want a partition dedicated to it or things quickly start conflicting and gets weird. If you want many distros without wasting space, you’ll probably need to do a fair bit of manual setup but you could make use btrfs and use btrfs subvolumes, so only the actually used space is used. You can even make a shared home directory with that kind of setup and be perfectly space-efficient!
Well, I tried Absolute Linux (which is a non-portable Linux distro) and I’m having the same issue as porteus. It boots fine from fat32 but wont boot at all from ext4. I think I’m going to just continue using Ubuntu for the time being. Even if it is slow and unstable on rare occasions, it works and I don’t have to spend hours trying to troubleshoot issues that probably aren’t documented anywhere.
I mean, I’m just looking for a Linux distro that can boot and load apps faster than Ubuntu. The only reason I had Porteus was because I had it for a reason that I don’t remember and it’s considered a lightweight Linux distro. I’m currently trying Absolute Linux because I was told that I’d be better off with a non-portable Linux distro, but it’s taking forever to download.
Porteus is a very specific distribution made to be run on a usb stick and not as an everyday system.
the slowness you find in ubuntu is mainly cause by the desktop environent it uses, namely gnome, try something with another desktop environement like xubuntu or the xfce variant of linux mint.
You seem to have a problem with the boot partition. Did you set up a separate EFI partition for booting ?
If not, that may be why Porteus boots on fat32 but not on EXT4. EFI needs to be stored on a fat32.
You can also create a persistent drive with Fedora. It works okay imo, but I really don’t like fedora.
Nope, I just installed it based on what the installation tutorial stated.
I’m pretty sure ext4 is baked into the kernel and has been for some time. Unless the distro has a really, really old kernel or has custom compiled it some really common drivers excluded, it won’t have any trouble reading ext4.
You might look at what bootloader the distro is using, though. The bootloader has to find some files (like the kernel itself) prior to the kernel taking over. So it’s possible whatever partition your
/bootdirectory is on might need to be something else to baby the bootloader along. Or just switch to using GRUB and you’ll be fine.There’s no issue with ext4, there’s an issue with Porteus that is designed to boot from a USB key.
Ubuntu itself is not slow or heavy, but your DE can be. Try installing another DE in Ubuntu and use it instead of changing distro. You may look at LXQt (package task-lxqt-desktop), LXDE (task-lxde-desktop), MATE (task-mate-desktop) or Xfce (task-xfce-desktop).
To boot Linux, the kernel and initramfs need to be loaded from disk. Most often this is done using a bootloader like GRUB, but UEFI can directly load compatible files as well. For that however, it needs to read the partition where this EFI image is stored.
FAT32 is part of the UEFI standard, so it can always be read. If you want to boot from a more complex filesystem, you first need to load a bootloader that supports it, like GRUB.
Porteus likely doesn’t have such a bootloader and is therefor limited to booting from FAT32. Similarly, at least one partition in Ubuntu is also FAT32, where the bootloader and optionally the kernel and initramfs live.Ok, but the problem I have with that is that I don’t know what distros have a bootloader and I don’t know how to work around that with the ones that don’t. So I’m just going to stick with Ubuntu because It does and it works for what I need it to.
You can safely assume that all distributions have more than one bootloader to choose from. Porteus is a bizarre outlier.
I tried Absolute Linux yesterday and it didn’t have a bootloader either. Although, Absolute Linux was supposed to be a non-portable Linux distro and has instructions on how to install it on the website but it functioned like a portable distros when I tried it.
Absolute Linux is based on Slackware (Praise Bob!), and it has multiple bootloader available for you to choose from: GRUB2, LILO, and syslinux (from a quick glance at their package list).
EDIT: I was curious about Porteus, and it does have a bootloader. It uses syslinux.
Ok but that doesn’t help me because either the bootloaders aren’t enabled by default or they are but I still don’t know how to work with them. As I’ve stated before, I’m just going to stick with Ubuntu, I know how to work with it and it does what I need it to. Unless there is another distro that installs itself the same exact way Ubuntu does but it boots and loads apps faster, I don’t think I’ll be able to use another distro.
Yeah, you should stick to Ubuntu.
If your eyes start to wander, look at the major distros instead of the ones you’ve been looking at. Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, Mint, openSUSE, and Arch. They’re all great and have easy installs. I highly recommend Debian and Arch. Reading their install guides could help you understand any Linux system a lot more. You’ll never maximize your speed if you don’t read the manuals for stuff. Generally, faster is going to mean more specialized to your hardware and your specific needs.
The only reason I’m using the ones I’ve been using is because there isn’t a proper way for someone to find what they need without manually checking each distro one by one. The best I got was the list of lightweight Linux distros on Wikipedia but that mostly seems to have a bunch of unknown Linux distros. If there was a list that contained the system requirements for all Linux distros (with a differentiation of installing system requirements and running requirements because a lot of distros require more ram to install than what they actually use when running) along with some other helpful information, I’d probably have an easier time finding one on my own.
Yeah, that’s what I’d recommend.
You should try Linux mint
Linux mint wouldn’t be what I was looking for because it has higher system requirements than Ubuntu.
That is absurd, I wouldn’t listen to that. Better yet, you should use Linux Mint Xfce version which is way more minimal than Ubuntu.
How much ram does Linux mint use in an idle state. Ubuntu uses around 1.5 GB and that’s enough to cause it to boot and load apps slowly.
Probably around 800mb, but It has been long since I’ve used any desktop environment. Nowadays I prefer tiling window managers, they are much more lightweight and fast.
Ok I could use it but because I think I might use it as a replacment for Ubuntu and other distros are giving me issues, I have two questions. Does it install the same way Ubuntu does? I.E. I’m not going to have to manually set up the boot loader like other distros and it’s just going to work right after installing. Does it have the same app compatibility as Ubuntu or is it possible that something might not work because it expects Ubuntu specifically?
It is based on ubuntu, so everything works out of the box, and no complex setup, mint is no archlinux or gentoo
I wanted to try Mint externally before I switched to Mint (just in case it didn’t work or something) but I can’t boot into Ubuntu anymore. I was supposed to have the option to choose which one I boot into but it just boots into Mint. I need to get back into Ubuntu but grub gives me an error that I can’t seem to find a fix for.
Ok, I’ll try that but one more question that I just remembered, do apps update like they do in Ubuntu? This isn’t going to prevent me from using it, I just need to know in case I have to manually update apps myself like how Flathub is.
