Comments for Review: PCLinuxOS (PCLOS) 2007 Final

After using Ubuntu for over a year I installed PClinuxOS because I was looking for a KDE-distro that worked and because I was curious. After satisfactory installing pclos I found out about this whole thingy. I'm an Ubuntu Fan. I bought a t-shirt from them. This review is not particularly 'bad' on pclos. But not good either. But what criteria does one have for judging a distro? Overal usage? XP/Vista switcher first experience? Easy to install? Ubuntu 7.04 did not recognice my ATI-card, while 6.10 did. That is what I call completely unforgiveable. Moreover Ubuntu got very sluggish after some months of use. Pclos so far works as a charm but what I miss is automated updates and Stability. It regularly fails to boot into KDE properly (ctrl-alt-bckspace does the trick) or doesn't log-out properly. Those are Real Bugs. The 'set up a webserver' thing didn't work either. However after installing apache via Synaptic I had lots less to do then with Ubuntu where it somehow gives me trouble to set up a sane developers environment. Who cares about a good or better partitioner? My grandmother isn't going to install any OS anyway and anybody switching from Windows will imediately notice they were heaps behind with that....

PCLinuxOS does not seem to agree with multi-boot systems, but I think it is a GRUB thing. PCLinuxOS at least on my computer doesn't hold my settings so when I reboot I have to re-enter them. This includes my DSL connection settings. The liveCD worked great, looks great, but I had to install it to my hard drive several times before I was sure I got things right to rule out some problems. Some persons will probably be successfully happy with PCLinuxOS, I am not. I run XP, Kubuntu and PCLinuxOS (soon to be removed) on an HP Pavilion with 64-bit cpu and 512MB ram, no special hardware. My fanboy vote stays with Kubuntu.

I tired pclinuxos again after reading this but it did not seem to feel right. The kernel is too old for my laptop giving me poor battery life. Also the wireless did not work. In Ubuntu Gutsy I get increased battery life and wireless as well as compiz out of the box. Pclinuxos won't install on a modern laptop like an intel macbook. I really don't understand what the hype is all about and I am suspicious of its distrowatch ranking (now #1). It feels like its cut up from Mandrake and ascetically looks like a firestone tire add with its ugly road kill look. Ubuntu is even in alpha states runs better. If you want a nice kde distro try Sidux. It is fact and up to date.

Three things:

The menu is substandard. There's no reason to make the actual program three or four levels down, especially since KDE gives you the option to use either descriptors (i.e. Database program!) or the program name. This strange hierarchy thing isn't found in Windows, either.

Second, there's no compelling reason (to me, I must say) to use this over Mandriva. Perhaps it's just me, but I found PCLOS2007 to be less polished than the original distro, and certainly less polished that OpenSuse or Fedora (though, that is an unfair comparison, I admit).

Third, the community has a gentooish nature in its fanatical obsession with 'being better than Ubuntu'. The newsletters, the forums - critical thinking is suspended when comparing the two.

I hope for the best for this distro, certainly - competition and innovation is the only way Linux is going to get better.

I like this ALOT, as a n00b to linux I find it considerably easier to work with than feisty fawn,
is it a facet of linux distro development that it HAS to be run from the command line ?
Best that Ive tried yet.

Nice One to the developers :>)

Iam a novice computer user and very green to the whole linux thing. but when my new HP crapped its windows and died I installed "live pclos and then loaded it to the hard drive
seems to work out really cool, have since installed it on two other machines for friend who were having nothing but trouble with their windows machines.As soon as I can learn to load apps I think Im'e gonna really like this OS
Jeffer

I'm download ubuntu liveCD, but it seems like I'll jump to PCLinuxOS wagon. I'm linux newbie and I'll go with the most userfrindly onw and the one recognize all my hardware.

I don't think the "installation" is the job one does everyday.

So it is more fair to evaluate the distro when it is installed on the hard disk IMO.

Someone said that PCLOS is a lot more stable than the KUbuntu. I don't know if it is true for everyone, but it is true for me.

I've got 4 computers, all can install and run PCLOS without any problem. But only 2 can work for KUbuntu, 1 can install but cannot boot, 1 cannot run ubuntu installer at all.

So, can we just conclude, as a KDE distro, PCLOS is a lot better the Kubuntu?

Hi All, I just wanted to ask what makes this distro so popular? What specifically do you like about it over other distros, namely Ubuntu 7.10? I'm intrigued by its popularity on distrowatch.org, which now exceeds that of Ubuntu 7.10! I've tried PCLinuxOS as well as Ubuntu (various previous versions as well), and frankly I like them both; other than graphics, they seem about the same to me under the hood.
My computer is only about two or three years old, so it can hold its own with most newer computers fairly well, and my hardware doesn't seem terribly out of the ordinary. For this reason, I haven't really experienced any real trouble with hardware recognition and have found that both distros do a fine job in this area. I'm using Ubuntu 7.10 now and quite like it, but having used PCLinuxOS in the past (though only for a short time), there is a side of me that remains tempted by PCLinuxOS (my second choice, but only by a whisker).

Are there specific performance-related reasons that have pushed you from other distros to PCLinuxOS? If so, what are they? This is a question I ask with genuine interest, with no axes to grind either way. I just want to know what others think and have experienced.

Thanks.