Comments for Review: PCLinuxOS (PCLOS) 2007 Final

I find it disturbing that virtually no one in the Linux community seems to understand how to evaluate software -- including the people who write it. When the boot screen comes up, what's the very first thing any tester or reviewer should do? Isn't it obvious? They should look in the lower left hand corner, see that it says "F1 Help", and press the F1 key. And then they should read that help, and see just how helpful and accurate it is. Go ahead, try it ... that was enough to make me very wary of the quality of this system right off the bat. Then, when it found an existing unformatted partition that I had previously created, told me that it was "ext2", and offered no way to set the fs type or flags before formatting it, I was dismayed, though it was easy enough for me to pop up bash and format it myself. But, when I logged out, and the login screen had no mouse pointer on it, I was at the point of abandoning the distro if that problem persisted on the installed system -- and it did. It's a shame, really, but perhaps PCLinuxOS's newfound popularity will lead to better quality control. But not without ""TexStar"" growing up and taking a far more professional attitude (dropping that handle would be a move in the right direction).

Someone who calls himself "hotdiggitydog" writes Oh come on! Does this really have to degrade to a "which distro is best scenerio.", then complains that the review is unfair, and then writes Awesome distro!

It deserves to be number ONE in the distrowatch rankings.

Um, just who is playing "which distro is best"? How can people that dishonest bear to exist?

bretzel writes "I am replying to your negative comments on my prefered distro with my own negative comments on other concerned distro -- funny isn't it ?? :-)"

I don't know about funny, but it is fallacious -- an example of "tu quoque", a fallacy of irrelevance. No amount of problems with other distros (especially Windows, which most of bretzel's comments were about) is relevant to whether the reviewer's comments about PCLinuxOS are valid.

I think what we're seeing here is primitive tribalism, the same sort of thing that leads people to personally identify with countries and religions and become "apologists" for them, quite independent of the facts. It's a pity that so few people have a scientific mindset, where what is valued is valid inference from observation to conclusion, without respect to personal bias. Scientists have even gone to great lengths to develop methodologies that shield their inferences from their personal biases, being honest enough to recognize that they have them and wise enough to understand that they should be avoided.

I have used PCLinuxOS many times on several different laptops and desktops. Never any true problems at all. Of course I wasn't just pretending and doing a virtual installation. Maybe when you write a review do it from the true life approach that real users will be approaching it themselves...not virtual. This is like writing a review of SpiderMan 3 after watching it on an Ipod. Get real! Not virtual.
I must say that the pre-configuration of Network settings wizard comes in very handy if you happen to have WLAN a card that needs tweeks.
And by the way I do appreciate your review in every way but I have a pet peeve with virtual reviews. I use VirtualBox myself and though it's rates high in geek factor it never comes close to ""real" mouse on experience.

Ubuntu and Kubuntu do not come with Java JRE installed. Ever try installing JRE? I did it many times in old releases of Mandrake, and I prefer not needing to do so. Or installing HP printer drivers. Those were two big reasons I switched to PCLos. Lastly, last time I checked, Opera is lacking in the 'buntu repositories. So it comes down to usability: out of the box, which OS is more readily usable. In my case, it's PCLos without a doubt. I think I've tried all of the top ten and then some, and for the work that I do, if PCLos weren't available, I'd be using Mepis. Sabayon is too bloated.

-Old Knothead
I think you are hugely mistaken:
1) HP drivers are well supported in Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu
2) Opera offers a nifty little .deb installer


My blog: http://dogbuntu.wordpress.com>

The control centre looks awesome. Hope Kubuntu folks come out with something like this.

well, this is interesting, and somewhat misleading. I used Ubuntu 7.04 (I have a desktop setup with it loaded) which took almost two weeks to customize to my liking, it works, it plays MP3's video, video editing, it's stable, and it looks sooo sweet. What I was saying is that it took over two weeks for me to customize to MY LIKING! w/Beryl, skins, email, frostwire etc etc

It took me less than two hours to do the same with PCLinuxOS. I use Ubuntu on one desktop, PCLinuxOS on my main desktop, PCLinuxOS on my Acer laptop and a host of other Linux servers and MAC computers on my network. I've been working with computers since the early 80's, I've run every version on Winblows (including Blista), I've tested out more than a few hundred Linux Distros including Mandrake/Mandriva, and in total honesty, there is nothing (Ubuntu included) better than PCLinuxOS.

I am NOT on their team or affiliated with them, and I get no money for saying this.

I Aagree with Mr Bill. There is realy nothing better than PCLinuxOS 2007.

Well, Up here in Canada, we're kinda just catching up to Linux, so let me tell you a story.
The company I work for handles amercan internet ISP tech support, so when it comes to complaints about OS's, we take the cake hands down. SO a few friends and I decided to try some Linux OS's. After deciding on Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Kubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Mint, and about 3 others I care not to mention (they need to be returned to the garage for a lot of work) I COULD tell you about my experiences, instead what I'll tell you is what ended up happening.

We open(ing) our own Linux PreLoaded computer company.

Huzzah and fun.

So we put Ubuntu, Kubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Fedora, openSUSE and Mandriva on 187 computers.... Vista computers at that. ACER would not uninstall them for us but they did drop the price. Anyway, I'll not go into depth about the 1 hour 15 min it takes to turn on a pc with Vista pre installed the first time. What a nightmare that was.

But onward, so after selling in our first month 78 of the computers to new Linux users (all of them, each and every one). Here are the results. Ready?

They all installed on ACER, COMPAQ, AND HP WITH EASE, very little tweaking. TRUE END RESULT:

Every single computer without PCLinuxOS on it came back. They simply couldn't fugure out how to do anything outside of surfing the web and using the games already on it.

Not one complaint from the PCLinuxOS systems, in fact, after installing PCLOS on the systems of the customers who complained, they were all happy. THESE ARE TRUE NUBIES. We now exclusivly sell them with PCLinuxOS on them all. We still offer the other ones, but so far only had one guy who wanted to try it. That lasted 2 days.

Sorry but unless you have been using Linux for a minimum of 6 month, know how to search through HUGH forums looking for answers, and are willing to learn code, the simple fact is, we live in a visual world now. People DO want point and click for their entire computer. The sheer ease of use and ability to find what their looking for (i.e. one menu not many like gnome based distros) Users who were used to windows DO need something that is familiar with what they had. Gnome is not it. After their used to fiddling with Linux, then eventually, maybe. But not straight out of the gate. It is user friendly, but to linux users.

Of all the complaints in all the negative reviews that I have seen, most people who did the reviews WERE linux users. You cannot now nor ever realize from that point on how hard it truely is for a new user to fugure out linux, just the thought of it brings out lots of stereo types. Do you even realize how many people do NOT dual boot there systems. They don't even know what that is, no less how to do it. They want, and I quote from our customer base... Simple to use, looks and acts similer to windows (without all the problems), can open documents, play games, surf the web, chat, check out photos and watch movies and play music. Theres a rare exception that also want to make web pages. Thats it.

The distro that does that the best with the least amount of figuring it out (menu's on top?) wins. Plain and simple. That is why PCLinuxOS ran to the top of Distrowatch. Thats why in a few months it went from unknown to contender. Thats why government agencies and schools are switching to it. Dell simply saw the larger user base and assumed that anyone of their customers would be able to switch. Loveno/IBM realized that Ubuntu was not so easy to use and made the mistake of picking the windows pansys SUSE. None of this brings WIndows and Mac users to us.

By seeing what people want (sorry windows does have %90 of the market still, despite vista) We DO need a distro that is easy to use and looks like it, handles like it, and is easy to switch to.

My wife, who had never used linux before, did try all the OS's we played with, looking for anything that was easy for her to figure out and use that was not windows. It quite literally pissed her off using Ubuntu for 3 days that she demanded I get rid of it. Not for stability reasons. Not for install reasons. Not because of repos or music/dvd capabilities. I set that all up for her.

What pissed her and all my customers off was, they couldn't figure out where anything was... that simple. Yes, yes theres a learning curve. But when your trying to get new users from Windows, the learning curve must quite literally be 1 day to a few hours. She figured out and has been using PCLinuxOS in one day, and will not let me play with or even try any more OS's anymore on her machine. She won't even tell me what she change the password to.... :p

But I digress. This is the same for all our customers now. Easy to understand is more important once the OS is on the system is all they care about. Everything there they need to do their daily computing. Having fun showing off thier 3d effects (which you don't need to log out by the way if you just run the beryl manager instead of going to the CC ->Hardware -> 3d) So there you go, no my review, but that of REAL nubies. And as of this writing, we are going to be putting them on a cyber cafe's entire network after a windows virus/hack issue and a Ubuntu failure (professionally installed) all thier customers dwindled away. Sorry, Ubuntu is a great distro, just not for real nubies who are making the windows leap.

Michael RedEagle
tygrredeagle@yahoo.com