Porteus icon
Porteus icon

Porteus

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...

Porteus screenshot 1

Cost / License

  • Free
  • Open Source

Application type

Platforms

  • Linux
Porteus screenshot 1
Porteus screenshot 2
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Features

Properties

  1.  Lightweight

Features

  1.  Portable Linux
  2.  Persistent Storage
  3.  Small-footprint

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Our users have written 2 comments and reviews about Porteus, and it has gotten 16 likes

Porteus was added to AlternativeTo by dbohdan on and this page was last updated . Porteus is sometimes referred to as Porteus Kiosk. 

Comments and Reviews

   
Top Positive Comment
TBayAreaPat
0

My favorite along with Puppy. Fast, light, intuitive with good potentials. Session can be automatically saved to usb.

munteanzeno
0

Simple OS, for a USB drive, to bring a PC to life, without needing to touch the internal storage. Plus ... it's portable.

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What is Porteus?

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.

Moreover, the Porteus Kiosk edition has been restricted to allow only use of the web browser. Furthermore, the browser has been locked down to prevent users from tampering with settings or downloading and installing software. When the kiosk boots it automatically opens firefox to your chosen home page. The history is not kept, no passwords are saved, and many menu items have been disabled for total security. When firefox is restarted all caches are cleared and browser the reopens automatically with a clean session to ensure no trace of history is left.

This system can be used as internet kiosk or other publicly available web terminal in schools, libraries, cafes, hotels, offices, tourist centers and a like. Another possibility is to use Porteus Kiosk for displaying information, advertisements, pictures or streaming videos to digital signage deployments. It can also act as a diskless (if booted over a network) workstation in companies which use browsers as a main working tool, such as customer support centers.

The kiosk will run on both 32-bit (i486 or greater) and 64-bit (x86_64) systems and can be installed to CD/DVD, USB flash drive, hard drive, or any other bootable storage media such as Compact Flash or SD/MMC memory cards. Porteus Kiosk is extremely lightweight in terms of size and used resources. The default image is under 50 MB while the size of your custom kiosk ISO will depend on your choice of adding extra components such as flash, java, additional fonts and other.