PCLinux 2009.1 impressions

[exploder]

Edited

[MALsPa]

I've also had some threads locked and deleted over at the PCLOS forums, with no explanations. Big turn-off. But the OS itself was good when I used it. Haven't felt the urge to try the latest, though. I hope that PCLOS continues to be a strong distro, and I'm glad it's there if I ever need it, but my feeling was that Mint and others are just as good, if not better.

[viking777]

Despite their 'personality problems' PCLOS is still an excellent distro, and recently I even discovered one way in which it was better than Mint (not easy that) - using Google Earth. Despite my relatively high speed internet connection I found that trying to use Google Earth in Mint resulted in such lag that trying to scroll a map was next to impossible, but switching to PCLOS it worked perfectly (same internet connection, same time of day etc) so it makes it very handy to have around. More so because my other favourite distro - Mandriva - appears to me to be on a downward path at the moment. Mandriva 2008.1 was a world beater. 2009 is developing problems for me and 2009.1(rc1) is still riddled with them despite being near to release. So that makes PCLOS a very good bet again. It certainly has a place on my machine. Although I will be watching Unity as well.

[Fred]

I am sure it is just me, but I just never could get warmed up to an RPM based distro. When Linux Mandrake first came out I tried really hard to like it, but it just didn't happen. I ended back with Gentoo. Gentoo is anything you want it to be, but it is quite time consuming to keep up to date, if that is your desire. I just don't have the time or inclination to fool with it anymore.

I think the Debian based distros are the way forward, especially for desktops, as long as Debian can stay strong technically. Ubuntu's development efforts are a disaster in many respects. If they couldn't fall back and lean on Debian they would crash and burn over night.

Fred

[viking777]

I am sure it is just me, but I just never could get warmed up to an RPM based distro. When Linux Mandrake first came out I tried really hard to like it, but it just didn't happen. I ended back with Gentoo. Gentoo is anything you want it to be, but it is quite time consuming to keep up to date, if that is your desire. I just don't have the time or inclination to fool with it anymore.

I think the Debian based distros are the way forward, especially for desktops, as long as Debian can stay strong technically. Ubuntu's development efforts are a disaster in many respects. If they couldn't fall back and lean on Debian they would crash and burn over night.

Fred

I have a lot of sympathy with what you say there Fred, but for me the problem with rpm based distros is not the rpm format itself but the hopeless gui tools they have invented to work with it. Yast package manager is by far the worst, but rpmdrake (mandriva) is not that special either. The point about pclos is that they have obviously taken that on board and provided synaptic which is the only gui package manager that matters.

On the command line (which I use but do not like) it is a different tale, because Mandriva's urpmi is better than apt-get.

[pad-thai]

I, too, had some problems with the personalities at PCLOS. I had wanted to contribute some on the forums, and possibly in development, but thought better of it.

PCLOS2007 was a great distro, however. Very well put together. I can't say the same about 2009, though. I had numerous glitches. In fact, that's why I ended up installing Mint. So far, I am very impressed. I still may try another PCLOS install down the road.

I have to agree with you about Ubuntu. I fooled with it back in the v5-6 days, and was not very impressed. In fact, I stayed away from Mint for that reason. I'd love to see you guys do a pure Debian cut (but I'm not holding my breath).

[exploder]

I have been experimenting with the built in remastering feature in PCLinuxOS and I like it! Package updates have been coming in and bugs seem to be getting quickly resolved. The system itself is solid but I am trying to remaster the system with more elegant artwork and all of the updates. I have found some cosmetic mistakes in the system, does not have wide screen wallpapers, mistake in gtk styles, power management set wrong by default for the display and some other minor cosmetic things I think I can improve.

I tend to hold every distribution I look at to the same standards we have, it just comes with the job! My goal is to remaster the OS and use it on computers I recycle to sell. The rolling release idea works for people that have no knowledge of Linux and just want to have newer packages available when they want or need them. Most people that have no Linux experience at all do not want to figure out how to upgrade their packages from removed and so far this is the best solution I have found.

I agree with Fred, I have never been crazy about rpm packages but the fact that PCLinuxOS uses Synaptic for package management makes things more appealing than using something like Package Kit.I do not want to spend hours updating a system that I have put together to sell. I want to get it done and out the door and not have to worry about something going wrong later down the road. With the economy the way it is and my hours at work changing on a daily basis, I have to do something to make up for the wages I am loosing on short work weeks.

PClinuxOS is really easy to remaster and this allows me to provide a restore disk with a system and it only takes me around 10-15 minutes to create an iso. If I can get the artwork to a professional standard I should be able to sell enough recycled computers to improve my income. I have sold a system with Mint 5 LTS on it and the user is very happy with it but it takes too many hours to get the system up to date as far as packages go. Remastering Mint 5 is a long and involved process and is kind of a hit and miss situation.

People new to Linux do not care if they have the newest kernel or xorg, they don't even know what those packages are, they just want their computer to run. Ubuntu's last release was full of regressions and the Jaunty base has massive regressions with graphics cards as far as I am concerned. I have to use something on these recycled machines that will work with a wide variety of hardware because I am piecing systems together.

I got in about 20 hours at work last week, so selling recycled computers is really helping out this situation. I have been reloading a lot of Windows machines for people too.

[Zwopper]

@exploder, isn't that very easy to do with remastersys?

[exploder]

@exploder, isn't that very easy to do with remastersys?

It is now where near as easy as as the PCLinux tool, 3 mouse clicks and your done.

[subslug]

I have a Sony laptop that for whatever reason PCLinux is the only thing I can get to run on. Ubuntu and Mint will both run but booting them live from a cd takes a full 20+ minutes to reach desktop.
It's a fairly speedy system too, P4 2.4 w/512 meg ram....which I know isn't a lot of ram but still.
This system doesn't have a built in wireless device but a PC card wireless device that is supported (broadcom) it does seem to cause the system boot time to lag terribly though. I pull the card and boot speed is better.

Anyway, both Ubuntu and Mint install on it but will only boot in recovery mode and the system couldn't be any more sluggish and still be usable. Not to mention the machine runs hotter than hell. It's fine on PCLinux though, I find it weird in these days to have such a varied experience running different Linux's on one system. I can't imagine what PCLinux does so differently than Ubuntu/Mint, usually from my experience it's PCLinux that's the difficult one to get working.