NOTE : ISO image generated by the wizard will contain Porteus 3.1 FINAL.
NOTE : Standalone ISOs/modules can be downloaded from dl.porteus.org in the /testing folder for each architecture.
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Although it is based on Slackware — which can be hard to install — Porteus is targeted at less experienced users.
One of the biggest differences between Porteus and the other distros mentioned here is that, instead of installing packages, it uses a modular approach. It has pre-compiled packages called modules, which users can activate or deactivate simply by clicking on them. Because this happens quickly, the overall distribution appears to be blazing fast.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the many lightweight distributions available; you can find hundreds on DistroWatch, for example. I have picked the ones that enjoy some stability, thanks to the communities backing these projects. This offers some assurance that the distro won’t disappear next year, which can happen with less-used, niche distros. The distributions mentioned here also meet the criterion of being easy to install (except for Arch Linux, which I use as a my primary distro). For this reason, I didn’t add Gentoo to the list; you have to compile everything, and that can be discouraging for a new user. The same is true for Tiny Core Linux.
