Porteus: Complete guide to have a Linux OS on your PC

Every time we mention a Linux-based operating system, the first thing that comes to mind is Ubuntu, which has earned a very important place for all those who prefer this type of open source system; Due to the excellence that Ubuntu has achieved today, we could almost assure that it it has achieved a good position over other similar ones. Porteus is an operating system also based on Linux, which offers us interesting features even from the moment we download it.

For this reason, so that we can use this Porteus operating system, we will start by mentioning the way in which we could get to customize it to be able to have exactly what our team needs, with little tricks that even come from the hand of the developer's "online application", who has proposed it as a small personalized assistant for all those who wish to use it.

Setting our initial preferences in Porteus

That is the most interesting part of all, because as we have commented in the previous paragraph, the developer of Porteus has proposed within its website a small assistant as an online application; there we will have several parameters to handle easily, which will help us to obtain only what our PC computer could support.

System.

This is the first area that we will find in said wizard, where we must choose the type of operating system that we want to have according to the architecture of our PC; in the first instance we can choose between a 64-bit and a 32-bit version, the latter which is perfectly well suited to computers with both architectures. If we are sure that our computer has a 64-bit processor then we should choose the second alternative.

We can also choose the type of interface that we want to visualize once we run Porteus, there are options for this, one in which it is shown only as a terminal window and also with a graphical interface.

In the third part of this area we will find the possibility of choose from different desktop layouts, having to select only the one we want to have once this Linux-based operating system is running.

Configuration.

This is the second area we will find ourselves in, where we can define our time zone; despite "Factory" comes by default, it may be convenient that we manually choose the country where we are.

The keyboard is another element that we can easily handle from this area, depending on the one we have on our PC.

Although the sound of the volume we could manage without problem with the keys of our computer, but here we can also define this parameter if we wish.

A little further down are option to drive the "advanced options", which should only be used by experts in Linux-based operating systems.

Modules.

Depending on our preference for using an Internet browser, the first item that we can choose is in this area; Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera are present here, only selecting the one with which we are familiar.

We will also have the possibility to choose the word processor with which we want to work, having AbiWord and LibreOffice.

If we are going to use video conferencing we could also choose Skype as our preferred client; If we are not going to use this service, we simply have to select the icon with the X.

Controllers.

Without a doubt that these are the most interesting and important part of all, because if we want our PC to work quickly with any task we decide to do, then we must choose the right video card driver that we have, having as options to choose the ATI Amd Radeon and the nVidia; If we don't have any of these video cards, we could select the penguin icon, which means that we will let Linux automatically configure our video card.

Printer.

Depending on the type of work we plan to carry out, here we can also choose to use a printer or not.

If we have perfectly configured all the parameters that have been shown us according to what we have suggested, then we will have to press the button that says "Build" (build or create), which will generate an ISO image with the Porteus operating system and with the preferences that we have chosen throughout the process.

So that you can see all this file in an ISO image you should mount it with a specialized application to later extract all the files and copy them to the root of the USB flash drive; this method requires that later make your USB pendrive bootable. You could also choose to use an application that handles ISO images and that transfer all content (with the boot included) towards our USB pendrive.

Later you would only have to restart the PC with the USB stick (or a CD-ROM) containing all transferred operating systems.