Porteus MATE is an open source Linux distribution based on the Slackware Linux operating system and built around the lightweight MATE desktop environment, a fork of the classic GNOME 2 session.
Porteus is a remix of the Slax Linux operating system, developed by a community of talented Slax users who want to keep its spirit alive. It is known for booting very fast, supporting several languages, and its ability to install, update and remove packages with a dependency-resolving package manager.
Distributed as hybrid Live CDs
This edition is distributed as two hybrid Live CD ISO images, one for each of the supported hardware platforms (32-bit and 64-bit). It can be burned to a blank CD disc or deployed on a USB thumb drive.
Boot options
Besides the fact that the boot menu has a different background image, it provides the same options as other Porteus editions (except for the Kiosk flavor, of course). For example, you can use it to copy the entire live environment to RAM (requires at least 1GB of system memory), boot Porteus in text mode, start an existing OS, initialize a PXE server, or access the PLoP boot manager.
By default, the live session is persistent, allowing users to save downloaded/created files and/or system/application configuration files and reuse the boot medium whenever they want (works only with USB flash drives). However, you can start a fresh session from the boot menu, which will erase all the previously stored settings.
Uses the MATE desktop environment
As mentioned, this edition used MATE, a traditional desktop environment comprised of two beautifully colored panels, one on the bottom edge of the screen and another one of the upper part of the screen.
Default applications
Default applications include the Claws Mail email client, Mozilla Firefox web browser, GNOME MPlayer video player, DeaDBeeF audio player, Transmission BitTorrent client, Leafpad text editor, uGet download manager, and all the default MATE applications.
Bottom line
Overall, this edition of Porteus is beautiful, fast and provides users with one of the perfect candidates for a low on resources computing environment.
