PorteuX 2.7 is out and ready to download. It’s the latest snapshot of this Slackware-based distribution, inspired by Slax and Porteus, built to be fast, small, portable, modular, and immutable. The whole point is that you carry it on a USB stick and run it on almost any machine without touching the disk.
This release lands roughly four months after PorteuX 2.6 and runs on the Linux 7.1 kernel, the latest stable series. That brings the hardware, filesystem, and networking work from that kernel, including the new NTFS implementation.
Eight desktops, each as its own flavor
PorteuX doesn’t pack several environments into one ISO. It ships each desktop as a standalone flavor. In 2.7 you get KDE Plasma 6.7, GNOME 50.2, Xfce 4.20, LXQt 2.4, Cinnamon 6.6.8, COSMIC 1.0.16, MATE 1.28.2, and LXDE 0.11.1. Pick the one that suits you and download just that image.
If you’re torn between the two heavyweights, our GNOME vs KDE Plasma comparison can help, since PorteuX hands you both in their most recent versions.
What’s new in 2.7
Each flavor gets its own improvements. These are the ones the team highlights:
- Support for the new NTFS-plus driver.
- More image formats in the Okular viewer of the KDE Plasma flavor.
- New global shortcuts in the COSMIC flavor.
- An unofficial port of the libadwaita theme for GTK3 in the GNOME flavor.
- A new native PorteuX cursor theme.
On the kernel side, 2.7 enables the CONFIG_COREDUMP option to fix errors in some apps such as SonarQube, and turns on FB_DEVICE to expose the legacy native user-space interfaces for the framebuffer subsystem. It also includes Android Binders for running Android apps and support for cgroup v1.
The rest of the changes target daily use: better webcam support, more performance from tuned build and linker flags, better NVIDIA GPU detection in the Xfce flavor, better keyboard layout selection in the MATE flavor, a polished NetworkManager applet, and Noto fonts added to fix missing symbols. As usual, many packages move up to their latest versions based on upstream releases; full notes are on the project’s GitHub page.
Who it’s for
PorteuX 2.7 is for anyone who wants a true live system: lightweight, quick to boot from USB, and hands-off with the disk. It fits rescue and diagnostics work, trying Linux without installing, or carrying your desktop between computers. Offering eight different desktops lets you dial in the exact flavor you prefer, from Plasma or GNOME down to LXDE or LXQt if you want something lighter.
You can download PorteuX 2.7 from the same location in its KDE Plasma, GNOME, Xfce, LXQt, Cinnamon, LXDE, COSMIC, and MATE flavors.