Submitted by PCLinuxOS 2007 Test 1 is now available for download. It is reviewed at Tuxmachines: “This release is all new, rebuilt from the ground up. Gcc is now version 4.1.1, Xorg is version 7.1.1, and they are using a 2.6.18 kernel. KDE is the newly tagged 3.5.6. This system is faster than ever on my hardware and what’s more, it’s still incredibly stable.”
ive yet to try this new release but its nice to see them finally moving to a modern gcc. pclinuxos has always been a great choice for new linux users.
the community left a lot to be desired though at least in my opinion. especially when compared to the thriving and helpful communities surrounding distros like gentoo or ubuntu.
“the community left a lot to be desired though at least in my opinion. especially when compared to the thriving and helpful communities surrounding distros like gentoo or ubuntu.”
Fraid you’re mistaken on this one. PCLinuxOS has the best community I’ve found in my 1995-present wanderings. That includes Ubuntu AND Gentoo.
I think you’re mistaken. PCLinuxOS has the friendliest, most helpful community of any, and I do mean ANY distro I’ve ever encountered. (I’ve literally used dozens of distros over the past five years.) In fact, I think it’s ironic you compared the PCLOS community to that of Ubuntu or Gentoo. While the Ubuntu community is friendly, for the most part, getting answers often takes multiple posts and numerous “bumps”. On the other hand, I have had several outright horrible experiences with the Gentoo community. I found the Gentoo people to be impatient, rude, and hostile to newbies. They’re elitist to say the least. Never have I encountered negativity in the PCLOS forums where everyone is extremely helpful and quick to help users adjust to Linux. You might be more specific in how you felt you were slighted by this wonderful community.
On the other hand, I have had several outright horrible experiences with the Gentoo community. I found the Gentoo people to be impatient, rude, and hostile to newbies. They’re elitist to say the least.
If I can take the last point first… What do you mean to say by calling them “elitist”? Do you mean that they refuse to turn Gentoo into another Anaconda-installed, friendly-wizard administered FC/SuSE/MDK-clone? If so, then you need to understand that that is not their market. They are developing a distro for people who want or need to be able to compile packages, so that they get the features they want (and only those features), without having to scour the net downloading software, edit lots of Makefiles, and manually compile and install all the required libraries. Equally, they feel like tools like YaST, whilst perfectly fine for some sections of the market, have their own inadequacies (such as barfing when manual changes are made to config files, or just ignoring those changes completely).
If you don’t understand that, or don’t want it, or don’t need it, that’s fine. But I don’t think the Gentoo people pretend that their distro is for “your kind of people”. I don’t believe you get people complaining that Rolls Royce or Lexus make luxury cars, that McLaren don’t make a hatchback, or that Boeing not going into budget helicopters for single mums is “elitist”; they simply serve different markets (and don’t see a need to change the focus of the distro to serve the users of Fedora, etc., any more than the Fedora project see a need to provide users with the ability to set system-wide and package-local USE flags).
One thing I will say is that when people say, “RTFM”, they should probably at least give a hint of which FM to R; but a lot of the rudeness you get with distros like Gentoo and Debian and FreeBSD is because people expect those who spend good portions of their time (usually free, gratis and for nothing) actively helping people to wade through millions of non-descript messages with subject lines like “Help!” or “I downloaded this iso. Now what do I do with it?” It’s much easier and quicker to ask the person to give full details on their system than to ask them “which iso?”then later, “what is your processor,” and then, “how much RAM do you have, etc.”.
In reference to Gentoo specifically, I can tell you that a lot of the frustration and rudeness you see on the forums comes from people who have to deal with newbies who think that Gentoo is and/or should be as easy an install as SuSE, and then get a shock when (a) they find it isn’t and/or (b) people react strongly to suggestions that it should be. I’ve found that as long as I state the problem clearly, solutions to problems I e found are usually answered courteously, and quickly, in the Gentoo forums.
But this really isn’t any different from the reaction you’d get if, as an American, you came over and told Europeans that they should all speak English and own guns, or if as a European you went to the States and told them they’re a bunch of barbarous colonials who can’t speak English properly. If you don’t like the fact that there are French people in France – seriously, don’t go there.
Whether newbies like it or not, there IS a market for distros like Gentoo, doing things the way Gentoo does it, and if you don’t like it stay away. I stay away from Fedora for exactly that reason – only I don’t go on about FC being “proletarian” or some such.
And then there’s the endless “I’ve been with Gentoo since before Unix was invented and now I’m leaving because I sick of {fred,barney,wilma}. Good riddance” threads, about which (especially since this post is now getting rather long) I’ll simply point out that the standard response has become “see you when you come back!”.
Edited 2007-01-21 22:52
Well, your rant simply illustrates my point. I didn’t read all of it…too long, but, I am a very experienced Linux user. I have used many distros over the years and I actively participate in several distributions’ official forums. When I ask a question, you can bank on the fact that I’ve done my homework and researched the problem to the best of my ability BEFORE I ask. I also am careful to phrase my question in as succinct a manner as possible and I always include all relevant errors as well as my hardware configuration. When I do this, I don’t expect to be brushed off by some impatient, elitist a**hole who treats me as if i’m the most ignorant human on planet earth and who won’t take a few moments to lend a hand, even if he has the answer. Why do these guys respond to questions in the first place if all they’re going to do is act like a jerk? I won’t be coming back to Gentoo. There are other distributions that are much less of a hassle to setup and maintain and their communities make you feel welcome. Oh, and for the record, I printed out and read the entire Gentoo manual. It doesn’t make me an automatic expert on Gentoo.
Edited 2007-01-22 03:15
Well, your rant simply illustrates my point
If you think that was a rant…
I didn’t read all of it…too long,
OK, so I should keep reading why? More fool me, I’m going to, to see if there’s anything worth responding to.
When I ask a question, you can bank on the fact that I’ve done my homework and researched the problem to the best of my ability BEFORE I ask. I also am careful to phrase my question in as succinct a manner as possible and I always include all relevant errors as well as my hardware configuration. When I do this, I don’t expect to be brushed off by some impatient, elitist a**hole who treats me as if i’m the most ignorant human on planet earth and who won’t take a few moments to lend a hand, even if he has the answer.
Well my point was that if you’ve done your “homework” that shouldn’t happen. You’re simply NOT going to find that all Gentoo users who spend time on the forums do so in order to be “impatient, elitist assholes”.
I won’t be coming back to Gentoo. There are other distributions that are much less of a hassle to setup and maintain and their communities make you feel welcome. Oh, and for the record, I printed out and read the entire Gentoo manual. It doesn’t make me an automatic expert on Gentoo.
Well, with an attitude like that, I’m sure the rest of the community will be glad to see the back of you. I already addressed the question of why Gentoo is “hard to set up” but you apparently couldn’t be bothered to read it. So I won’t bother to repeat or quote it.
Since when did reading the manual make you an “automatic expert” on Gentoo?
Sounds so nice, it’s hard to wait for the final version!
I’m mostly a Windows XP user, but have been very impressed with PCLinuxOS (my favorite Linux distro) and have a triple boot system set up with PCLinuxOS 0.93.
PCLinuxOS 0.93 works very well, with great performance, looks & stability.
I’ll definately be looking forward to the final 2007. There are only very few Linux distros out there that are of such high calibre. And this is truly one of them. I’m confident it’ll gain in popularity as more people become aware of it & give PCLinuxOS a try.
Great job guys, I look forward to using 2007 (0.94) final.
When I tried to enable 3D Desktop effects, it tells me “Your hardware does not support 3D effects” and I have NVidia 7600GT PCI-E. The xorg.conf says “nv” for driver so I am not sure what’s happening.
Edited 2007-01-21 21:42
As far as I know nv doesn’t do 3D. Get the binary driver from nVidia itself, that one will give you 3D capability.
(should be in the list in aptitude, maybe by adding another repository like it has to be with Ubuntu)
nv does not have 3D hardware acceleration support.
open synaptic and reload (this can be done from the live cd and from installed if wished) click search and type nvidia.. select the nvidia driver you want (starts dkms-nvidia) which will download and install the driver for you) , close synaptic and open pclinuxos control center and click hardware tab then configure graphical…
it will ask if you want to use the 3d drivers anwser yes
quit out and it will restart X… log back in and go back to pcc >>>hardware click 3d and choose whether you want aiglx or xgl with either compwiz or beryl restart xserver once more and wallah
All the best
Alie
Hey that worked 100% Thanks! One other final thing. From the Full 3D Desktop Effects, I have two options: use Beryl and use compiz. Regardless which one I choose, when I restart X, my windows don’t have any title bars. It’s like there is no window manager starting. So I can’t move the windows but the special effects for menus, cube when switching the desktop etc are all here. How do I get my title bar back? I went to Configure Beryl, too many options, I am not sure which one enables my title bar.
Edited 2007-01-21 22:41
goto system>>configuration>>other>>beryl manager applet
this will put beryl in the systray. click it and go to Advanced Beryl Options>Rendering Path and choose copy. while in the manager make sure that beryl is selected as window manager. you should now have a title bar.
All The Best
Alie
edited to change typo
Edited 2007-01-21 23:01
Thanks!
Hehehe, these special effects are so cool 
Overall, very happy with PCLinuxOS.
heavy pclinuxos user I installed this today (on a separate partition to .93 and I’m delighted so far with this distro… another winner for Texstar and the Ripper Crew. I understand the is a RC1 version but i’m impressed already. OF course it’s got some small bugs but no show stoppers yet for me (ymmv). I look forward to PclinuxOS 2007 when it’s done with the bug hunt (btw the 0.9x moniker of pclinuxos has been dropped so no .94
)
Oh one more thing… setting up wifi is now a serious breeze with ndiswrapper (no need to touch command line)
All The Best
Alie
at LinuxQuestions http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=PCLinuxOS~*~…
Gentoo one the one hand is strictly for experienced Linux users only. Real geek stuff. Command-line and text file configuration abounds. Power users only.
PCLinuxOS is the most newbie-friendly desktop Linux distribution there is. Now with pretty new decorations and extra performance and all the latest software ready-made for you, and it comes with an dead-easy-to-use software installer for both itself and for extra packages, and an easy-to-use and extensive GUI “control panel” for confuguring every aspect the system.
Why exactly are people discussing these two near-opposite Linux distributions in this one thread?
PCLinuxOS is the distro I use year and a half. Im impressed again what mr.Tex and all the gang did. PCLOS runs fast, clean, without sweating, and always arrives first! Cheers, waiting for the final release!
http://planet.beryl-project.org/
If the final version of PCLinuxOS 2007 includes this, it may help a bit with stability.
Beryl itself is still pretty much beta though. Don’t use this yet on any “real work” machines would be my advice.
Is by far one of the most polished flavours of Linux out there, but (and I’ve said this before) it is let down by a very boring, geeky name that is a poor match for the rest of the distro. Tex and Co., while being superbly good at packaging together a fine OS, are sadly not too good at coming up with names. Which is a shame, because the name you give something is the first thing that draws people in and creates interest.
“Ubuntu” works very well: it is a single word of only three syllables, it sounds a bit exotic and it has phonetic symmetry. These factors alone have probably contributed enormously to the success of Ubuntu on the Linux scene (the free CD shipping notwithstanding). I personally find PCLOS generally preferable over other Distros, though I do find (X)ubuntu and Zenwalk to be quite nice (XFCE is my preferred DE on Linux), but to most casual computer users, nothing says “geek” like a string of acronyms and unimaginative titles. I highly suspect that if people considering a move to Linux do a google search and come across PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu, 9 out of 10 will go to Ubuntu first, purely because of the exotic name versus the yawn inducing one. Most Linux distros will work on PCs, they are all Linux, and they are all OSs, so the name doesn’t really give it a distinctive flavour.
Change the name guys! (but keep up the otherwise brilliant work).
You’re quite right. The name doesn’t give justice to the quality and awesomeness of this distro. Oh how many blank stares I get as I excitedly share the name of my favorite distro.
This chestnut has been much discussed on the forum. In a poll last November 71% of 143 members voted to leave the name as is.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=11331.0
New members often restart this topic but us long time users just got used to it.
The world is full of corporations with long acronym names yet we recognize them.
The PCLinuxOS or PCLOS name does have a good recognition and the high Distrowatch ranking certainly does’nt hurt.
The *buntu name is IMO a well conceived brand name and Canonical has $$$ to market it, employ many developers and support the whole shebang.
In comparison, PCLOS fairs very well with just a tiny fraction of those resources. Kudos to the PCLOS developers.
Yes, that speaks to the quality of the product that it can get so much positive attention in spite of it’s awkward and uninspiring branding. With the new level of polish that has been applied to the distro,I think it will continue to gain users regardless of whether or not Tex et al change the moniker.