RutSum

PCLinuxOS 2007

I’ve finally found the distro that meets my daily needs, and qualifies for becoming a mainstream distro, a replacement to Windows XP. It’s been 2 and 1/2 months since I’ve been using PCLinuxOS 2007, and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. The ease of use is so delightful, it’s like being pampered by an elder. You have everything ready for you, waiting for you to exploit it’s features. There is no compromise on security, which is obvious considering that it is based on Mandriva. I’ve hardly turned to the terminal since I installed PCLinuxOS 2007, it has a gui utility for each small thing. The planning and hardwork that has gone into the development of this distro is commendable. Hats off to the Texstar group.

I downloaded the iso from the http mirror, a 697 MB file. I installed it on my pen drive first, so as to get a high speed live environment.

Here’s how I put it on my usb drive –
1) Format it using FAT/FAT32 filesystem.
2) Copy all the contents of the ‘isolinux’ directory directly to your drive (not in any subfolder) and rename the ‘isolinux.cfg’ to ‘syslinux.cfg’.
3) Now copy the folder ‘boot’ and the file ‘livecd.sqfs’ also directly to your drive.
4) Download syslinux from here (if you already don’t have it, of course). It’s just 2 MB. Now unzip it somewhere on your hard drive, preferably directly in a partition (i.e. C:, D:, E: etc.)
5) Open a command prompt (Start >> Run >> Type “cmd”) and browse to the directory where you have unzipped syslinux. Open the folder win32 inside that directory. Now type “syslinux.exe X:” where X is the drive letter of your usb drive.
6) That’s all! Your done!. (You may also have to change some settings in you BIOS to enable booting from a USB drive, I assume you know that, I’n not writing about that over here)

After booting from my USB Drive, I was greeted by a dialog which asked me about various settings (Keyboard layout, time zone, network settings) which I skipped by simply pressing cancel.

There are two users by default – guest and root, the passwords are same as the usernames. I logged in as root, and was taken aback by the blazing fast speed. The default desktop environment is a highly customised KDE 3.5.6. The distro is lightweight, efficient, and comes with gui apps for almost all your daily needs. The installer is quite user friendly, partitioning was easy, a piece of cake. The installation took only 4 mins, which is amazing as compared to Ubuntu 7.04′s installation time, which was longer than 25 minutes. The installer asked me if I wanted to edit GRUB, the default bootloader, and it was quite easy, I could change the default boot option too.

I booted into the system, started by changing the resolution. It has an inbuilt control center (similar to Windows’ Control Panel) which makes configuration easy for even a newbie. I did not have to reach for the terminal for any step of installation or customisation. The repositories included most of the software I needed (Opera, Skype etc.). The default music player is Amarok, which is already customised and is ready for use. It includes Open Office 2.2.0 for all your professional need (which was the only letdown, OpenOffice is awfully slow). It also comes with Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird 2.0, Frostwire, Ktorrent, Flash, Java JRE, Beryl 3D preinstalled. I’m not elaborating on Beryl, most of you already know about it.

I found PCLinuxOS to be more customisable and newbie friendly, as compared to any other distro (which includes everybody’s favourite, Ubuntu). I’m not anti-Ubuntu, I have a problem with their philosophy,which includes their unwillingness to change. Another major problem that I have faced with Ubuntu, since the time of Breezy Badger, is a problem of random hangings, which I have been unable to solve till date. Ubuntu has an over active forum, which has a side effect; if your problem is unusual, it will soon disappear from the front pages, and you’ll have to keep on bumping it till a knowledgeable guy comes along. The PCLinuxOS forums are, on the other hand, under-active, which has obvious effects, you have to wait for answers. But the improvement made by the Texstar group in this version is amazing.

Here are some screen grabs from my system -

A long discussion has been going on, ever since I posted this on IBF. I’ve managed to shift about 10-12 people to PCLinuxOS, about 7 of them are on IBF.

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