Gnome Remaster of PCLinuxOS

[Jimmyslim33301]

Hi all,

I'm a Breezy user and I'm seriously considering switching to the Gnome Remaster of PCLinuxOS:

http://genieos.toluenterprises.com/otherstuff.html

I've been using it for about a week now and it seems to have Ubuntu beat on just about every major area. Any thoughts on this?

[Pablo_Escobar]

Looks too much M$ for my taste, I like Gnome as I have it - in pure form, just as it was written.

(PS. Not using Ubuntu :) )

[Lord Illidan]

What does it have better?

[Jimmyslim33301]

"What does it have better?"

I'm using both Ubuntu and this remaster currently and here's what I have found:

Hardware Detection: PCLinuxOS seems better in this area. It works with everything I have out-of-the-box.

Installer: PCLinuxOS's installer is quicker and easier to use. Plus, it's graphical. I find PCLinuxOS installs in half the time as Ubuntu.

Community: Tie. Both these distros have a great and helpful community.

Themes: PCLinuxOS's look seems better to me and it comes with tons of other themes preinstalled. Although, a quick trip to gnome-look.org would fix this on Ubuntu as I hate the brown scheme.

Repository: Tie. They both use APT and Synaptic. Ubuntu has a commanding lead in quantity of packages (~17,000+), but I find the PCLinuxOS (~4,000+) to have more useful stuff. I don't need 20 web browsers, but I do need realplayer, libdvdcss2, w32codecs, java, flash, and the mplayer plugin. Those are all included in Texstar's repository.

Central Control Center: PCLinuxOS's control center is based on Mandrake's since PCLinuxOS is Mandrake-based. You can do anything from the control center.

Stability: I would lean slightly in Ubuntu's favor on this one since it's based on Debian.

Security: Tie. Both are safe and both can have firewalls installed.

Polish: Tie. Both are very polished distros.

Upgradeability: PCLinuxOS seems to upgrade properly. I have had many issues upgrading from Warty to Hoary and Hoary to Breezy. PCLinuxOS is designed so that you never have to reinstall the system. I just upgraded a PCLinuxOS system where hundreds of packages were upgrade and not a single problem. Impressive.

[Lord Illidan]

"What does it have better?"

I'm using both Ubuntu and this remaster currently and here's what I have found:

Hardware Detection: PCLinuxOS seems better in this area. It works with everything I have out-of-the-box.


Well, Ubuntu does this too, on my hardware at least. However, yes, it does give me the nv driver as default which is damn useless, since my NVIDIA 6800 does not seem to work with it. Otherwise, ok.



Installer: PCLinuxOS's installer is quicker and easier to use. Plus, it's graphical. I find PCLinuxOS installs in half the time as Ubuntu.

I dunno. Ubuntu always had a fast install to me, compared to other distros, then again, I haven't seen PCLinuxOS. About the graphical installation, and ease of use, I am at ease with Ubuntu's installer. So far SUSE has the best one, IMHO.


Community: Tie. Both these distros have a great and helpful community.

I agree. Ubuntu's community is the best of any other distro, commercial or otherwise.



Themes: PCLinuxOS's look seems better to me and it comes with tons of other themes preinstalled. Although, a quick trip to gnome-look.org would fix this on Ubuntu as I hate the brown scheme.

I also hate the brown scheme, though now I use Kubuntu.



Repository: Tie. They both use APT and Synaptic. Ubuntu has a commanding lead in quantity of packages (~17,000+), but I find the PCLinuxOS (~4,000+) to have more useful stuff. I don't need 20 web browsers, but I do need realplayer, libdvdcss2, w32codecs, java, flash, and the mplayer plugin. Those are all included in Texstar's repository.

I don't know about the more useful stuff, though I agree that the default repos, (and I think the real repos, universe, etc, should be enabled by default), should have these multimedia codecs. I don't know why they are not, some issue about patents??



Central Control Center: PCLinuxOS's control center is based on Mandrake's since PCLinuxOS is Mandrake-based. You can do anything from the control center.


Yes, Ubuntu's Gnome sucks when it comes to control centres. That is where Kubuntu shines..


Stability: I would lean slightly in Ubuntu's favor on this one since it's based on Debian.

Haven't had a crash with Kubuntu yet...lots with SUSE..


Security: Tie. Both are safe and both can have firewalls installed.

Polish: Tie. Both are very polished distros.



Upgradeability: PCLinuxOS seems to upgrade properly. I have had many issues upgrading from Warty to Hoary and Hoary to Breezy. PCLinuxOS is designed so that you never have to reinstall the system. I just upgraded a PCLinuxOS system where hundreds of packages were upgrade and not a single problem. Impressive.


I don't know, as I didn't upgrade, I just re-installed. If it is as you say, then it is indeed impressive.

[futz]

Excellent! I ran PCLinuxOS as a dual boot on my Ubuntu box for a while, but I'm not a KDE guy, so dumped it when I rebuilt and upgraded the machine.

It's a pretty decent distro. Guess I'll be downloading another ISO and trying it out.

Oh, one little thing I dislike about PCLinuxOS is that it uses Lilo instead of Grub. I could never get Lilo to dual boot Ubuntu, and finally had to reinstall Grub and fiddle with it for an evening or two to figure out how to get it to boot PCLOS.

[xequence]

http://genieos.toluenterprises.com/sitebuilder/images/screenshot-pclinuxos-gnome-0.92-614x490.jpg

If thats what the gnome desktop looks like... The desktop logo looks like the windows one, but swirled a bit.

And the whole thing where they eliminated the top bar, to only go with one and make it look like windows.

Id never consider using that =P Id rather use the KDE version, even though I like gnome better.

[pelle.k]

I tried out PClinuxOS yesterday, and i have to say it was a breeze to use!

Thats's why i seriously must ask someone involved in dapper development, whats going to change?
Small things like for which I KNOW THE REMEDY, but i don't WANT to do this everytime i install ubuntu.

(Trust me, ive seen many people ditch ubuntu because of problems with rights/no root account)
Browse/open as root - when rightclicking on a file.
Mount manager can mount NTFS so regular users can browse open files.
Terminal and file browser as root.

(Xserver and new drivers...)
Executing dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg (or something...), after downloading a new driver.
Not use the highest availiable setting in gdm, after swithing resolution in gnome.

(regular stuff..)
To remove icons from the desktop you have to go inte configuration editor and nautilus and deactivate it... huh? stupid...

I know... multimedia, issues properiate blablabla. But it still is a fact.
Unless you give joe user direct access to these things he is giong to ditch ubuntu. I almost did. If this can't be done, then there HAVE to be some way to smack something like automatix in their face RIGHT after installation. PERIOD.

So... does anyone know what's going to be done to dapper. Because i can honestly not recommend ubuntu to anyone until these issues are gone. :( until the i'm going to recommend PClinuxOS.