Great review overall. I agreed on most if not all of what you said. I did find this bit a little odd however..

“The name has never appealed to me, but it must to others judging by the DistroWatch rankings of late..”

PCLinuxOS has always been ‘PCLinuxOS’. It’s consistently been in the top 15 at DW for as long as I can remember. Only since the test releases of the current release was there a huge surge in their ranking at DW…a reflection of the ongoing care and attention to detail put into each successive release and the word of mouth it generates…so I think suggesting their name has any bearing on interest seems a bit silly. I (like many) have never been a fan of the name, not that it should matter in the end. This is a well received distro in spite of the name, not because of it

Thanks for the nice review. The origin of the name PCLinuxOS: Texstar has had a site for some time now called pclinuxonline.com. He had this since the days when he used to build 3rd party RPMs for Mandrake 9.x. When he created his own live CD and repositories, he named his creation accordingly.

Where we really try to make PCLinuxOS shine, with a good amount of success, is in hardware detection. That’s the thing you only notice when it goes wrong. In your case it didn’t.

I have a desktop and a laptop. The Suspend/Hibernate contol icon (KLaptop) was correctly put in the system tray on my laptop but not on my desktop. The key to getting Hibernation (to disk) working is in the KDE Control Centre > Power Control > Laptop Battery. You may also have success with Suspend to RAM, I certainly did. Plenty of help at the site for different hardware and things to try if it turns out to be problematic.

The other thing we aim for is that you do not have to re-install with every new version. PCLOS2007 required a re-install due to the compilers being updated, but we hope that each version will successfully merge into the next for the foreseeable future, until the compilers again become obsolete.

Your conclusion: Mint for Gnome lovers, PCLinuxOS for KDE fans, is reflected in a lot of stuff I see on the net. Where KDE has the advantage is that it’s more adaptable for Windows refugees. We’ve tried to make Linux accessible to more people, and this, coupled with other things that are turning people away from Vista, accounts for the popularity of PCLinuxOS.

a well-written review for professional distro. seems fitting for me to not to add any uncalled-for opinions, but i would like to point out that i am using both pc linux 2007 and linux mint on my gateway laptop. both are as awesome as my beautiful brazilian wife.

Will someone think of my eyes?

Dark gray text on a black background? Really? Please….

I wish I could comment on the review.. but I just couldn’t read it…

Nice review! Clear and efficient, as always. I have already tried PCLinux OS and I do think it is a great and beautiful distro, but, just like you and other Gnome fans, I would still choose Linux Mint (Cassandra) or give Ubuntu Feisty a nice look and feel (clean and smooth colors!) because, in my oppinion, these two distros put together a perfect combination: Debian base archtecture and Gonome desktop environment!

Will someone think of my eyes?

Dark gray text on a black background? Really? Please….

I wish I could comment on the review.. but I just couldn’t read it…

I agree that some sites are hard to read. Thanks for posting this complaint. If you are using Firefox, you can read this site easier if you do
–

Sorry for the apparent incomplete post. I had put in some formatting that was ignored, so I’ll try again. You can read this site better in Firefox if you do view - page style - no style.

Just a thought, but you could mention for those that like gnome better, it is available through synaptic…. task-gnome I believe will get everything.

A very good in dept review. Thjere is a Dutch site called: www.pclinuxos.nl where a full dutch version can be downloaded.

Keep up the good work all. Linux is the future.

PCLinux

Nice review….mentioned the pros and cons of the distro accordingly…..I’ve been a huge fan of this great distro since it’s 0.91 version (this 2007 version is equal to 0.94) because of its beauty, completeness, easy to administer, readyness out-of-the-box, and the KDE with full of its features.
I found another distro such as Ubuntu and Mint as the strong contenders for this OS…..
for those looking for the lightweight XFCE “version” of PCLOS, please kindly try SAM Linux 2007

Wow…you have a great non-bitchy, non-whiny, real person approach to reviewing a distro. I appreciate that you take into account your own mistakes. I do agree bout the clock…but must say that most distros look like a Mac and Windows cocktail…shaken or stirred? And remember drinking and drivers don’t mix. Get it?….drivers? LOL

Just do the following command

apt-get install task-gnome

Now you have Gnome along with KDE.

apt-get install task-xfce

You also get xfce.

Nicely done review.

I use pclos for both myself and all my clients for their desktop boxes. All things like kde, gnome, fluxbox etc. work for all, just choose your favourite.

Excellent review. I’ve been using Ubuntu for the past two years, but have experimented using 20 or 25 different distros out of curiousity. PCLOS looks like an excellent distro and I was anxious to try it alongside my Ubuntu install.

However, I was lost with the installer. I’m used to the Debian style of selecting “use contiguous free space” and letting the installer create and mount the partitions automatically. What happened was the same thing that happened to you. The installer seemed to create three unformatted partitions on my hard drive. The reboot is, I suppose, to designate the mount points for each of them and format each of them. The installation instructions make no mention of this reboot process and I had no idea where to begin. So, I used gparted to delete to unformatted partitions.

It might help if I understood mount points, but, since no other distro that I’ve tried requires this, I don’t have a clue.

Stephen: Just use gparted to make a new partition under Ubuntu, PCLOS will automatically use your existing swap, and install it on the new partition.

The way I look at it is: if you want PCLOS to do its work fine. If you are running another distro and want to take a look, create a partition in a way that’s comfortable. That’s what I do if I have a look at another distro, as the last thing I want is to hose what I have. And I’m sure that you feel the same way about your existing Ubuntu setup.

Sorry I just noticed that my last post could be read two ways. I meant that you choose your “new” partition to install it on, using the “Use Existing Partitions” option.

I suspect that the partition bobble was caused by PCLinuxOS’s use of the existing swap partition on the disk. Most live CDs do. With swap in use, the modified partition table was written to disk, but the old one was locked in memory.

You can get around this by disabling the swap device before repartitioning.

Or, you can do what the installer wanted and reboot right after repartitioning.

Great review, and true to my experience. Although I’m agnostic on KDE/Gnome, PCLinuxOS kills with its graphics and artwork. The only thing to come close with hardware detection is the new Fedora 7. As a Windows guy who’s spending the year switching off of all things Microsoft, I recommend that Windows users test PCLinuxOS first, and then compare every other distro against its usability. If nothing else, a lot of people come back to PCLinuxOS out of sheer frustration with other distros.

Nothing in the review about wifi or screen resolution.

1280×800 is not allowed in pclos unless you are successful at tweaking xorg.conf.

wifi just never worked on mine… no pclos here.

Hi davecs and Zartan,

Zartan: I also tried wiping my HD clean and installing PCLOS and had the same experience, so I know it’s not related to the swap parition.

davecs: Okay, but doesn’t PCLOS require a separate home partition, which would mean creating two partitions in gparted? Where I’m particularly lost is in the mounting area. No other distro required it, so I’ve never come to understand mounting through experience.

1 - My laptop is 1280×800 and the live CD picks up the correct res. It depends maybe on your hardware. If you need particular ATi or nvidia drivers you can get them in synaptic. If your screen resolution doesn’t come up right (my monitor doesn’t “report back” correctly when using the DVI input) you can correct it using the Control Centre. Rarely with certain more awkward hardware, or for certain situations, maybe with Dual Displays, you may be required to hack xorg.conf, but most users never have to do this.

2 - PCLOS does not require a separate /home partition, and anyone just testing would definitely not need it. However I recommend that if you decide to keep it and commit your personal data, have a separate /home partition. I would recommend that for ANY linux. I tend to poke around where I shouldn’t, and if I break my PCLOS setup, I can re-install, then install my personal list of essential packages, before recreating my “user” and all my personal settings and data is there waiting for me!

Stephen: When you create partitions in Linux (ANY linux) they get system names:

/dev/xdyn

Where “x” is h for IDE drives, s for SATA
Where “y” is a for the first drive, b for the second, etc
Where “n” is the partition number starting from 1.

As you can only have 4 primary partitions on a Hard Drive, what happens is that most distros create 2 partitions, 1 is the main one, and the other is called “extended” and is a “container” for as many partitions as you want. So instead of 1,2,3,4 they are numbered 1,5,6,7 (ie 2,3,4 get missed out).

So it’s a question of what you want on your hard drive. Are you dual booting another Linux? Are you using Windows? Do existing partitions already have data that you need to retain? Really you need to join a forum for individual advice.

That said, if you’ve ever multi-partitioned a Hard Drive in Windows, it’s not particularly hard to get the hang of.

For PCLOS users that would prefer the Gnome desktop try please try the HD O/S: http://www.linuxgator.org.

Sorry, it’s labeled Harley Davidson O/S

How is PCLinuxOS with SATA drives in Raid 0 dual booting with Suse 10.2? Will I have Suse in the GRUB menu?

Hi Good review and makes a refreshing change from some of the Distro bashing sites,
i use PCLos as my main OS, i didn’t choose the easiest to use distro because of it’s name, after trying many others i found it just works without having to pull my hair out wondering why, if anyone asks me what O/S i use i just say Linux, the name has no play in my choice,
i agree with you regarding Mint, yes another good distro to challenge MS,
mick

@davecs, thanks for your comments. Especially regarding the use of Linux partitions and its usage.

Enjoyed reading the review AND comments.

Ever since I installed PCLOS, I was hooked. The thing that really sold me was the not-so-open mp3 device. I installed and then opened my music file and ran my mouse over one of my mp3 files and couln’t believe my ears. It immediately started playing without having to do anything! I don’t know how that was accomplished, I’m just over joyed it was.

Davecs, I’m glad you’re getting your screen rez right, but a distro has to work on popular laptops like mine, too (Acer).

No wifi. No 1280×800 and what bothered me the most is
no help in the forums there! Just one try then silence for 5 weeks now.

Vector SOHO 5.8, however, did it all, including wifi!

Sorry about that, Oiving. At the end of the day, one of the good things about having so many distros is that one may like your hardware when another one doesn’t.

My laptop is an Acer, too. Aspire 1692. BTW I just installed PCLOS on a friend’s laptop with ATi X1300 graphics. Although the install came up as 800×600, installing the “ati/dkms-ati” package from Synaptic resulted in full 3D performance and the resolution being automatically corrected (in his case) to 1280×768. I can’t remember the number of his laptop but it was also an Acer. It has “Atheros” wireless and that just worked, too.

Great review!
I am looking forward to PCLinuxOS Gnome Version.

I am very disappointed with this distro. Almost nothing work well. Sound exists for some time,then, sudenly, after turning on the pc again, it disappears for no reason and I have to run alsaconf all over again to bring it back. It recognized my tv card BT848 and it worked fine for the first time. And never again after that. Kmix behaves weird. It changes the values by himself for no visible reason. And I had more smaller problems. To bad, because, if it worked well, this would be the distro that would satisfy all my needs concerning software choice and hardware recognition.