Submitted by PolishLinux reviews PCLinuxOS 2007. “I must admit I am impressed by PCLinuxOS. And according to the distro slogan, which includes the two words ‘radically simple’, installation and configuration of the system is really easy, and the system is very friendly in everyday usage. Some of this ‘radical simplicity’ should be credited to hammered out details, and the system’s elegant appearance (although this is a matter of individual taste). Regular users will find in PCLinuxOS everything they need ‘out of the box’. Thanks to the consistency and the possibilities to configure the system with graphical tools (e.g. PCLinuxOS Control Center) this distro is close to ideal for those starting their adventure with Linux systems and migrating from Microsoft Windows systems.”
I came to PCLinuxOS at the 0.92 release and have never looked back. After using Xandros, Ubuntu, Mepis, etc. I decided (on the strength of a review similar to this) to give it a try and while preceding releases were very good, 2007 is stunning.
Aesthetics – very good, very ‘professional’ looking
Stability – peerless
Speed – quick to boot and to use
Packages – good choice and very easy to manage
Support – excellent forums, good comunity
I still try other distro’s from time to time (esp. Ubuntu) to compare and see if they can offer anything different but I haven’t found anything to make me consider giving up PCLinuxOS.
I know other people may get different milage out of this (or any other) distro, but for me it is perfection.
Kudos to Tex and his team.
Edited 2007-07-20 13:19
Is it any good using other DE’s than KDE ?
I Always saw it as a “KDE-Based” distribution and I can’t stand KDE (personal taste, let’s not start a flame on that).
I’d really give it a fair try if I could load, say, Xfce or GNOME in it easily. So, if it is possible, please tell me
All the main DE’s are available and work well. I mainly use KDE but sometimes find myself using Fluxbox or XFCE for a change – all work very well.
KDE has got the best intergration in PCLOS.
If you like XFCE, I would suggest SAM Linux, a XFCE-based PCLOS remaster. I haven’t tried it because I’m ok with KDE.
http://www.sam-linux.org/
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=04124
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/14581
OK, I’ll give it a go. It seems interesting. Thx for the comments.
PclinuxOS user myself I can only agree with you
Yes it comes with gnome, xfce, icewm etc… it’s all in the repos,,, oh including metiesse
edited for previous posters question
re-edited for typo
all the best
Alie
Edited 2007-07-20 14:04
OK, I’m NEW to PCLINUXOS and never thought I could switch DE’s that easy…..
Will try to do that on machine I administer with NX server….
Thanks for the tip
Edited 2007-07-20 22:14
I have ran PClinuxOS besides ubuntu and think it’s equal or even better. Especially for beginners new to linux the good configuration screen doesn’t have to hide for example the OpenSuSE counterpart.
While you can’t argue about taste i like the pclinuxos aestetics more than the original mandriva. In my opinion pclinuxos 2007 is what OpenSuSE should have been a long time ago. I’m curious to know what ubuntu comes up with their next release in terms of a configuration screen and apparmor for instance.I wish ubuntu could integrate mandrivas msec in addition to apparmor.
Ubuntu and PClinuxOS are on place 1 and 2 in the distrowatch hitlist for a good reason
Edited 2007-07-20 14:13
Completely agree.
I think it’s no coincidence that the 2 top distro’s (according to distrowatch) are 2 of the most professionally presented distro’s out there.
While you can’t argue about taste i like the pclinuxos aestetics more than the original mandriva.
I’ve been using Mandrake or Mandriva as my primary platform for 5 years, but I just installed PCLinuxOS on two auxiliary PCs and I am very impressed. I may even switch my main Mandriva machine.
Been a long time GNOME user, but from what I have seen, KDE4 will fix 90% of my gripes with the DM, while my biggest problem with GNOME seems to be flourishing, and that is moving forwards at a snails pace.
Using Ubuntu now, which IMHO is the best gnome-centric distro out there. Unfortunately, kubuntu is far from the same for kde. All my friends who have tried PCLOS tell me that it is what Kubuntu should have been though, so thats what I’m looking at for my next distro of choice.
This is interesting, since I’m a Kubuntu user at work. Can you point me at some meaningful comparison between the two distros?
Well IMHO it doesn’t really matter what distro you use. You can pimp KDE as much as you desire. http://www.kde-look.org is a great resource.
I recently switched from PCLinuxOS to Kubuntu, due to some minor issues. For example on one of my boxes the onboard sound chip was not supported and I could not get the Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox to work (no sound) on any of my boxes.
OTOH PCLinuxOS has a more sophisticated configuration program and KDE configuration center, which is very poor in Kubuntu IMHO.
Fortunately PCLinuxOS is yet another Live-CD, so what’s keeping you from giving it just a try?
If you’re familiar with *buntu, would it make sense to check out MEPIS, instead (as it’s based on ubuntu and widely touted as a ‘better kubuntu’)?
I tried out PCLinuxOS a couple of weeks ago under Virtualbox on my Gentoo machine.
I was trying it out to see how easy it would be for my brother to use. He saw my Compiz-Fusion enabled desktop and liked it.
He goes to school and doesn’t do much. He could get away with openoffice, dvdshrink (Windows version under WINE, not the Linux dvdshrink), audacious, Firefox.
So I install PCLinuxOS and the installation was really simple. I get into there and immediately I get a hickup with the synaptic package manager. When trying to install WINE, it got 7 of the 9 packages but on the 8th one it got a 404 not found. So I had to change repositories to finish the installation of WINE.
Then I remembered that my brother also uses TagAndRename on Windows so I go to install easytag on PCLinuxOS. It installed just fine.
Everything is great so far….then I go to download the setup exe file for dvdshrink in Firefox.
It downloads fine.
In the downloads window I right click on the setup file and select “open containing folder”.
All of a sudden easytag opens up instead of Konquorer or some other file browser.
I close easytag, try it again….same thing.
So then I delete the PCLinuxOS virtualmachine.
I tried zenwalk, but for some reason that wouldn’t even install in Virtualbox.
Not flaming, or anything, that was just my experience. I realize little quirks happen in every OS but for me, this was too “fresh out of the box” for quirks like that.
A better way of installing dvddecrypter and or dvdshrink is: open a terminal and type “wine SetupDVDdecrypter.exe”
than the app might not detect your dvdrom drives right away but configuring with “winecfg” and setting the OS type to winnt4 and auto detecting the drives (don’t forget to specify your dvd drive eg: /dev/hda as cdrom type in the wine cfg screen).
Yeah, I had to go through all of that on my machine. That setting it to winnt4 was kind of obscure.
Anyway, my reasoning for trying “open containing folder” from firefox was to see if PCLinuxOS had associated .exe files with WINE after installing it. I was impressed so far with it even after having to change repositories. I would have been sold on it if I could just double click on the .exe and have Wine open it but I never got that far since it decided to open easytag instead.
. I would have been sold on it if I could just double click on the .exe and have Wine open it but I never got that far since it decided to open easytag instead.
agreed:-)
Have you managed to set a file asociation for wine aka gnome properties openup with ..?
Like I said, that is where I gave up on PCLinuxOS. Something as trivial as opening a file browser should have worked.
I didn’t go to try and fix it, I didn’t go into a file browser manually and find the .exe file.
I don’t use gnome, can’t stand it personally. Don’t care too much for KDE either. XFCE works just fine for me. Thunar isn’t flawless but I do mostly command line stuff anyway.
“Like I said, that is where I gave up on PCLinuxOS. Something as trivial as opening a file browser should have worked.
I didn’t go to try and fix it, I didn’t go into a file browser manually and find the .exe file.”
So you ditched a whole distro that ran fine for you because of THIS? Incredible. All you need to do is set file associations with ‘Open with’ dialogue, something one frequently has to do in Windows as well (for example if you care about which one of all the media players there opens a specific file format). And in KDE it even looks the same and is JUST AS EASY.
I guess the whole GNU/Linux is for experts is true, if some people can’t even be bothered to do even the most basic of tasks and then complain ‘it’ doesn’t work. There’s no fix for sheer laziness.
Edited 2007-07-21 13:34
All the steeps that Mandriva didnt made… I will give a shot to try and see if leave ubuntu
When’s the last time you tried Mandriva?
Why should they when you can get a better distro without all the failings? I know you’re a Mandrake/Mandriva contrib dev from the mailinglist so I really did expect you to chirp up on this subject. Face it, when you had a chance to have Tex be a contrib you all gave him the short shrift and he went on to create what the USERS wanted, i.e. updated KDE and other rpms in a timely manner. So when PClinuxOS does better than Mandriva it seems to me that the users have spoken and they don’t need to try something else-they are “doing it with their feet”.
I work for Mandriva, I’m not a contributor. I thought everyone here knew that by now. I mention it all the time.
I’m not going to go into the history of Tex and MDK. It’s water under the bridge and both sides have changed completely.
I will only say that you shouldn’t make statements like “Why should they when you can get a better distro without all the failings?” if you haven’t actually tried the latest versions of both distributions. Have you?
when pclinuxos was 0.92, and mandrake was i can`t remember what version, i tried them both – pclos was better – now i`m with pclos.
I don’t have to install Mandriva to know about the failings, I can read about them on the web. Just to be honest, I have and will continue to try PClinuxOS although I am a Gentoo user. It (PCLOS) fits my needs on some of my machines and also is a great LiveCD for others to try. One of my Windows Sysadmin friends tried it and loved it because it worked as HE wanted it. I personally disagree with many of Mandriva’s way of doing things and their way of selling their product so I will probably not use it on that basis.
The point of my original post was to wonder why you had to chirp up when this didn’t have anything to do with Mandriva and why any mention of PCLOS usually of brings up these posts.
“I don’t have to install Mandriva to know about the failings, I can read about them on the web.”
Well, that rather speaks for itself. Way to have an open mind.
“The point of my original post was to wonder why you had to chirp up when this didn’t have anything to do with Mandriva and why any mention of PCLOS usually of brings up these posts.”
I replied to this post:
“All the steeps that Mandriva didnt made… I will give a shot to try and see if leave ubuntu”
How can you say that has nothing to do with Mandriva?
Sorry about that. I went back and read the earlier post.
“Well, that rather speaks for itself. Way to have an open mind. ”
Sorry, but I do have an open mind and I will try a tool that makes my work better. I am not a Linux fanboy or a Gentoo fanboy. I’m a pragmatist. I would rather have Linux at my work but it’s for the govt. and they aren’t changing to suit my tastes. As for having to install a
distro when I have a perfectly well-trained brain AND can read is just a lot of foolishness.
As for the way Mandriva does things-I used to be a Silver Club-(when Mandrake was really struggling) and a cooker-list member for 2 years and I don’t care for the even the idea of the club now. If you look a the way the all the other distros and the way they distribute their product, Mandriva is so convoluted and complex with all the different choices. And their mirror system is THE worst. Also the policy of non-free drivers and some software leaves me shaking my head. This behavior is why I left for Gentoo and haven’t looked back although I try to keep an open mind and I do read the Mandriva forums from time to time to see what has been going on.
Can you mail me at awilliamson AT mandriva DOT com ? It’d be good to discuss your points but I don’t want to clog up this public thread with it. Thanks.
OK-Thanks AW
I didn’t get a mail from you yet?
“I personally disagree with many of Mandriva’s way of doing things and their way of selling their product so I will probably not use it on that basis.”
Please let me know exactly what you disagree with, and maybe it can change.
Everything worked when I installed, but the internet wouldn’t stay set up. everytime I rebooted accept once, I would have to set it up again. Last time I did it I couldn’t get it to work at all.. No drivers needed so that wasn’t the prob. The connection is DSL & OpenSuSE does fine with it. I do want to say, this is the way moree user-friendly GUI distroes need to go.
Edited 2007-07-20 16:14
and this compares well with the very much broader Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora & openSuse projects which have vastly greater developer resources.
There are many other very polished similarly small community distros like Dream Linux, Sabayon etc with a different niche.
Though PCLOS is my main desktop, I do spend a lot of time using other distros for their specific strengths for example easy LTSP setups.
So rather than advocate switching, I encourage people to settle with what works for them and the community they are comfortable in. If your presently a hopper, then by all means try PCLOS and use the forums.
PCLinuxOS looks nice but its missing two things:
1) 64-bit version with multiple libraries so 32-bit apps can run coincidingly.
2) Needs more security features like SELinux, Exec-Shield, and all the other nice security features you will find in RedHat-based distros. After all… Windows Vista has most of these. All Linux distros should too.
Number 1 is nice but I wont reguarly use a distro without number 2… so I guess I’m a Fedora user then? 😛
I really want to know what the advantages and differences of PCLinuxOS to Mandriva Linux:
1- Both have MCC (Mandriva Control Center)
2- Both have livecds (Mandriva has MandrivaOne) and Mandriva has also a friendly and complete traditional installer
3- Mandriva already is multilanguage, including its livecd (MandrivaOne)
4- Mandriva is made by a company and also have free versions (Mandriva Free Edition and mandrivaOne), using the same repositories of the paid versions (Powerpack and Powerpack+)
5- Mandriva Linux also have apt and synaptic (and smart, better than apt) but urpmi is the default package tool.
I don’t know why Mandriva Linux is not very popular in USA. In my opinion it is better and more user friendly than *buntu and it has all (and more) the features of PCLinuxOS.
“I don’t know why Mandriva Linux is not very popular in USA.”
It’s French.
French-Brazilian, please! we’ve got the food *and* the party.
“It’s French.”
Oh, yes. But Ubuntu is from South Africa.
The word Ubuntu is from South Africa.
Mark Shuttleworth is a South African.
Mark Shuttleworth’s company Canonical is registered in the tax haven Isle of Man.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu
Ubuntu is officially from the Isle of Man. Not South Africa.
the first post best describes my opinion. PCLinuxOS is my choice for OS. I don`t have 64 bit machine or mac and i will never buy one, i like “the standarts”. Anyway, you missed one thing – “mklivecd” – the way i`m bringing my customized OS with all my data and files on live-dvd in my pocket, ready for 15min install on any i386 machine ;]
Edited 2007-07-21 09:07
mklivecd started out as a Debian project. just FYI.
“Mark Shuttleworth’s company Canonical is registered in the tax haven Isle of Man.”
A company installed in a fiscal paradise of the British crown and not part of European Union.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man
Even Microsoft don’t do this…
Getting really OT so OK to mod down
but Microsoft do partially do this in Ireland
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060314/0146201.shtml
A quick google of ‘corporations tax havens’ for many examples. Top 25 Fortune 500 Corporations With the Most Offshore Tax-Haven Subsidiaries. Right most column % growth since 97 is telling.
http://www.citizenworks.org/corp/tax/top25.php
Edited 2007-07-21 17:26
well, as we started to talk about mandriva and pclos, here is my opinion: mandriva is big business organisation, with lots of personel, lots of money invested, and they are BEATEN by one person driven PCLinuxOS, beaten in quality and rating etc.! So if i was one of the managers of mandriva, here is my words to my employees: “You are all fired!”
Edited 2007-07-22 16:18
Mandriva is hardly a ‘big business organisation, with lots of personel, lots of money invested’. There’s well under a hundred staff involved in Mandriva Linux, and, well, you can read about our finances.
But anyway, your post is akin to saying – all these thousands of schmucks were involved in building Apollo 11, and Neil Armstrong was just one guy who beat them all and stepped on the moon!” It just doesn’t make sense. If Tex was maintaining an entire self-sufficient distribution on his own, then you could say Mandriva is beaten by one-person driven PCLinuxOS. But that’s not the situation. He’s using Mandriva as a base and independently maintaining a subset of packages on top of it. Would you say that Canonical should fire all its employees because Linux Mint ‘beats’ Ubuntu, according to some people? That’d just be silly.
ok. maybe i was too extreme, pclos is mandrake based at all. but i prefer pclos, and not only me, and i think it`s better. the importnant thing is, that it`s better than vista.