New PCLinuxOS user

[Idura]

I just installed PCLinuxOS and I must say I'm impressed. Installation was very easy and there is alot of customization options. I was able to get my wireless USB adapter DWL-G120 working on it , when I couldn't on ubuntu.

Any other PCLinuxOS users?

:popcorn:

[tomcat1965]

Well why not install Mandriva 2007.1 Spring instead. PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva,however it suffers from truly dreadful artwork and a general lack of inspiration. Mandriva suffer from the erroneous belief that one has to have a paid for version to get the full range of packages, Not true at all. Joining the club isn't a requirement just an option to support the distro and Linux in general.
The club membership gives access to special club editions,early releases and a commercial repo containing Adobe's acrobat reader for example. An easy download from Adobe's web site along with the flash plugin so nothing you're missing out on anything package wise.
And you'll get a very pleasant surprise when the screen saver kicks in after you've been idle for a while.:p

[dpzektor]

I installed it too as I see it is now right in line with Ubuntu in popularity so it seems. It is indeed an absolutely fantastic distro. I would absolutely recommend it to people migrating from Windows. You are pretty much all set from the get-go. The best multimedia features I've seen in any distro right from the start.

[scxtt]

pclos is great ... i was using it for a few months just to see what all the beryl fuss was about (Sabayon was also good for this) and it's a fantastic distro ... i mainly started using it after Feisty gave me HUGE hassles about setting a static IP ...

[WoodyMahan]

I recently swtiched over to PCLOS as well. I was able to install and configure everything in my system without having to open the command shell even once. Ndiswrapper, 3D Graphics, codecs, it's all right there in the repos or (gasp) already installed and available. I found a derivative called SAM Linux that I really like. Very cool desktop configuration right out of the box. SAM is an xfce desktop instead of KDE so it will run on an older machine.

[b9anders]

I am using it right now. Unless Mandriva can match the control centre and speed of PCLinuxOS, I am not switching (I am considering trying out sidux to test their speed with kde). Ubuntu couldn't, so I dropped it.

[floke]

Currently using PCLOS alongside Feisty and Mint3.

[kazuya]

I know it is based on Mandriva. However, I find PCLOS to be on a whole different level in terms of ease of use, stability, and elegance. It is up there with Ubuntu for ease of use and slightly less in repository.

Mandriva tends to be buggier in the past. This is different today however. PCLOS is radically simple to use compared to the parent..

[screaminj3sus]

Well why not install Mandriva 2007.1 Spring instead. PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva,however it suffers from truly dreadful artwork and a general lack of inspiration. Mandriva suffer from the erroneous belief that one has to have a paid for version to get the full range of packages, Not true at all. Joining the club isn't a requirement just an option to support the distro and Linux in general.
The club membership gives access to special club editions,early releases and a commercial repo containing Adobe's acrobat reader for example. An easy download from Adobe's web site along with the flash plugin so nothing you're missing out on anything package wise.
And you'll get a very pleasant surprise when the screen saver kicks in after you've been idle for a while.:p

I've used The newest Mandriva and PCLOS 2007 recently, Mandriva was horrible in comparison, allo kinds of problems, buggy, CUPS wouldn't install (When I tried printer setup got "CUPS could not install)l, it was also slower. PCLOS is Blazing Fast, uses synaptic, and looks much better. PCLOS has a small package library, but it's pretty decent and has all important ones, there wasn't anything missing for my needs. PCLOS also does more out of the box. It's alot more than just a slightly different mandriva. I'm currently using Mint and it's great, I'm mainly using it because my Dell printer would not work in PCOS. Mandriva, but I can get it working in ubuntu/mint.

[dpzektor]

Yeah, I decided to switch off from Ubuntu to PCLOS yesterday. It is just faster on my machine, and feels more responsive and solid. It's so easy too...almost too easy :) This can most definitely be given to a newbie of Linux and I doubt they would have many problems...at least performing basic everyday operations (web, email, music, movies...etc). Great stuff! The only thing that I think it really needs is to come default with KPackage as well. It can still of course be installed via Synaptic. I would guess their reason for not including it was to avoid new users installing bad RPM's. Ah well...no biggie.

[Extreme Coder]

PCLOS's Control Center is basically a modified version of Mandriva's Control Center. Guess what the drak in the configuration tools' names are for? :)
Well, I used Mandriva 2007.1, and I liked it a lot. I tried PCLOS yesterday, and I couldn't see what would make it different than Mandriva other than the package management(apt-rpm/synaptic vs urpmi/rpmdrake), a different theme. Anyone who knows more is free to enlighten me.

[steveneddy]

We put PCLOS on my daughter's machine mainly because not enough memory available to run Ubuntu.

I was surprised that she could watch video and flash without DLing ANYTHING!

She did the total install and was up and running in under 30 minutes.

Personally, for the lower level version, it looks great and performs well.

[trmiv]

I've switched to PCLinuxOS as my primary distro and I love it. I prefer KDE to Gnome, and PCLinuxOS blows every other KDE distro out of the water. Pretty much everything "just works" including all the buttons on my Logitech mx510, which was something I had to follow a HOWTO to get half working in Ubuntu.

[kelvin spratt]

I use PCLinux as well as Feisty and it is very good a fairly fast and most things work from the box but overall for me Feisty is the one i prefer. I would recommend PCLinux to any body thats for sure

[kazuya]

I too believed PCLOS was a replacement alternative to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu Feisty still leads afterall for me. PCLOS is great, but Ubuntu is more adaptable to various types of hardware and is very easy to use to get things going. I am so used to it and the ease of getting whatever I want that PCLOS is almost there, but cannot do that for me.

PCLOS is great, but have you seen Kubuntu-desktop now. It is a God-send as well. I even prefer it to my initial Ubuntu gnome interface...

They are all great, but Ubuntu still leads for me.

The most adaptable distros I have seen to most users of different hardware peripherals are puppy 2.16 and Zenwalk 4.6 beta.

[wilberfan]

Well, I was curious, so this relative n00b decided to give PCLOS a try...

My first attempt a week ago was disasterous! Probably not PCLOS's fault--but it wouldn't recognize my Ubuntu install, and in my attempts to restore the GRUB file, I ended up borking my ENTIRE system... I (literally) had to reinstall EVERYTHING: XP AND Ubuntu. (Just as well, now I have a lean and mean XP install--which I will probalby only use for Photoshop and Quicken!)

Given the hard lessons learned, I tried again a few days ago: It IS rather pretty, but I had some trouble getting my screen rez correct (but, to be fair, every version of Ubuntu--going back to Dapper has never gotten it right either...).

I was impressed with how much was pre-loaded, and all of the networking, et al, configuration menus (which I didn't actually try) looked like good news...

The fonts didn't look as crisp and clean as my gnome and kde feisty, though... so points off there... (No 64-bit version, either.)

The deal-breaker for me happened just now when I booted into PCLOS and discovered (to my horror) that it seemed to have (automatically?!) replaced the GRUB entry! I don't recall doing anything to request that to happen--and that's a strict no-no, in my book...

I whipped out my Super Grub Disk and got the Ubuntu GRUB restored, then went right to the gparted livecd and formatted the PCLOS partition(s)!

Ultimately, I don't think it worked THAT much better than Kubuntu--and I don't think it looked sexier-enough to warrant putting up with what seemed like a pretty serious breech of OS behavior!

(Plus, I don't think installing Swiftfox was going to be very easy--and I've become rather fond of that browser...) Oh, and in 4 attempts, I could never get a confirmation e-mail from the PCLinuxOS forum! That's another thing I LOVE about my 'buntu! These here forums!! :)

I still think it's very cool that we have all these choices--in this case, I still think U(k)ubuntu still wins my popularity contest...

[rocknrolf77]

first off I'm not a kde kind of guy (I know pclisnuxos have gnome too if you want it). But pclinuxos installed well. Everything detected well. One cool feature that I've not encountered anywere else was that pclinuxos was preconfigured for my sidebuttons on my mouse. No other distro gave me that. Thumbs up for that :) And they have taken the mandriva control center one step further.

But the lack of packages made me miss ubuntu. At least they made the use of apt and synaptic for exellent package managment. When using apt for rpm's I don't see half the problems with "dependecy hell" as I see in mandriva, suse and fedora. I really can't understand how they could not make a better gui for the packagemanagment in fedora 7. In 6 months that's all they could come up with?...... :-k (Just have to get some anger out about some of the rpm distros) Wondering how cnr will work out on the diferent rpm/deb distros :-k

[scxtt]

The deal-breaker for me happened just now when I booted into PCLOS and discovered (to my horror) that it seemed to have (automatically?!) replaced the GRUB entry! I don't recall doing anything to request that to happen--and that's a strict no-no, in my book... as far as i can remember PCLOS will ask you about installing grub, it doesn't just do it ... and it'll use whatever hd(*,*) is requested on the MBR disk you boot from ... so i see no reason why you couldn't use your *buntu /boot/grub/menu.lst info if it's intact ...

[Stew2]

Interesting thread. I was just going to post to see what people thought of PCLinuxOS :). I think I will download the iso and give it a shot. I picked up an old 800 mhz Compaq at a garage sale and would like to throw a light linux distro on it. XP is dog slow, as is Ubuntu (only has 256mb of ram). Would try Xubuntu but can't seem to get the wireless sorted out. Funny too, Puppy Linux has no problem at all with my wireless but Feisty won't cooperate :confused:. Sounds like PCLinuxOS has good networking/wireless support OOTB so I think I will give it a shot :D.

[ffi]

Try SAM Linux instead, it is PCLinuxOS with XFCE as default desktop

[Stew2]

Try SAM Linux instead, it is PCLinuxOS with XFCE as default desktop

Oops, I had already started downloading the PCLinuxOS iso before I noticed SAM was a lighter version. Should be able to change the WM to XFCE though? Burnt my iso, gonna give it a shot now :D

[Stew2]

Woot! Got the wireless set up! Now my wireless works in two Linux distros! Sweet. Clean looking distro! :D

[Stew2]

Mission successful! Installed it on the old 800 mhz machine and even with the default KDE it is definitely fast enough to be usable. Feels much quicker than XP or Ubuntu on the same machine. Synaptic is a little goofy though, I suspect one of their package servers is down. Kind of makes you realize how dependent we are on the internet for our packages ;)

Sorry for derailing this thread, but it kind of applies as I am a new PCLinuxOS user :D

[FuturePilot]

I decided to give PCLinuxOS a try. And at first glance I thought it was trying to be too much like Windows. But this was a little too much. I wanted to install it on my entire hard drive so I select Use Entire Drive. Then it warns me about all data will be lost. So I click next and what!? It tells me I need to reboot!!? Hmmm. So how do you install this?:-s

[trmiv]

I decided to give PCLinuxOS a try. And at first glance I thought it was trying to be too much like Windows. But this was a little too much. I wanted to install it on my entire hard drive so I select Use Entire Drive. Then it warns me about all data will be lost. So I click next and what!? It tells me I need to reboot!!? Hmmm. So how do you install this?:-s

It tells you to restart after it writes the partition table. Restart and then restart the installer and choose to use the existing partitions.

[FuturePilot]

Ah yes. I got it now. Pretty nice distro. Just have to get the synaptics touch pad driver working and my volume buttons. Not to many distros like my volume buttons. They only seem to work in Ubuntu. And I can't sudo Hmmm.

[trmiv]

Ah yes. I got it now. Pretty nice distro. Just have to get the synaptics touch pad driver working and my volume buttons. Not to many distros like my volume buttons. They only seem to work in Ubuntu. And I can't sudo Hmmm.

It's a laptop it's installed on? Go to the PCLinuxOS Control Center and see if one of the keyboard selections for your brand of laptop works. I have an HP and although it didn't have my particular model, I selected them until I found one that worked. May work for you. If that doesn't work you can try "acme" you can get it from synaptic.

[FuturePilot]

Thank you so much for your help. Acme got my volume buttons working. Now I just need to get my touch pad working and sudo.:D

[FuturePilot]

I found a better way to get my multimedia keys working. I used xev and now all of them work without any extra daemons running!:D And I got sudo working. Now just that touch pad. Seems like a great distro.

[DreamcastJack]

put this distro on my desktop...wow..thats all i have to say.

[FuturePilot]

I installed Gnome because well, I'm a Gnome lover:p
And all I have to say is this is definitely a KDE centric distro as there aren't many Gnome packages in the repos and the Gnome desktop was pretty much a mess. There are some third party Gnome remastered .iso around. I hope that there will be enough backing for a Gnome version at some point in the near future.
But I can live with KDE. It's a great distro. As far as I can tell, it doesn't suffer from that nasty freezing problem Feisty had on my laptop.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Ah yes. I got it now. Pretty nice distro. Just have to get the synaptics touch pad driver working and my volume buttons. Not to many distros like my volume buttons. They only seem to work in Ubuntu. And I can't sudo Hmmm.

PCLOS uses root instead of sudo, instead of typing in sudo in a console you type in su.
Me I think PCLOS beats ubuntu FF in terms of stability from my experience so far, Feisty gave me all kinds of issues and it gave me nothing but headaches.
But PCLOS trumps it I have to honestly say, it runs a lot smoother in my opinion.
The lack of packages in it can be made up for as its possible to use mandriva packages, but I would not install anything critical that way just minor stuff.

[scxtt]

PCLOS uses root instead of sudo, instead of typing in sudo in a console you type in su.you can easily convert any non-root account into a sudo account {assuming you have root access} ... sudo just has to be installed, then as root type "visudo" and un-comment out the "wheel" group, then add users to the wheel group ... when i was using PCLOS, i NEVER flat out used the root account ... even in Gentoo, i use sudo ...