Download
The download went smooth and after verifying the checksum a shiny new CD was burned. At that time I had Ubuntu 10.04 running on the laptop so I was in for a nice 'clash of the Titans' as PCLinuxOS was about to expell Ubuntu from /dev/sda1.
A shock!
So, in went the CD and a few seconds later, the new PCLinuxOS boot screen came up, only to drop to a black screen after a few seconds. Gosh... this is odd. The download was fine, the checksum OK, burned at the lowest possible speed. I went to my desktop, popped the CD in and there everything was OK.Back to the laptop. Try number 2. Again the same black frozen screen. Even after waiting several minutes, nothing moved. This was really a first. Never since I hopped over to PCLinuxOS (2007 TR1) had I encountered any problems of this kind on the laptop.
I tried to boot in VESA mode, as I suspected a video driver problem. Again a black screen, but this time the system came to halt on a console where I could log in. Entering 'root' 'root' I was presented with a nice # prompt.
That was nice, and I launched drakconf. I selected the video option and I noticed that no videocard was selected at all. How can that be. This is a kind of regression that a 'radically simple' distro can do without.
I know that my laptop is fitted with a 'ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]' which is detected by ALL distros I tried so far. So what went wrong, I don't know.
Anyhow, I selected the 'ATI|RADEON X1950 and earlier' driver and exited drakconf. A '# startx' later I was back in business, and was running the LiveCD as root.
The problem has been posted on the PCLinuxOS forum.
My Broadcom 3412 wifi had already been detected and I quickly made a connection with my AP.
I also configured my printer (Samsung ML1710)
Installation
As expected, nothing fancy during the installation. /dev/sda1 was selected as root partition and /dev/sda5 as /home partition on my 100% Linux dedicated HD. Both were formatted in ext4 and a nice cup of tea later, I could restart the laptop.During the first restart I entered my root password and created the first user, and could log into the KDE4 desktop.
First impressions
Printer and Wifi settings from the Live Cd were copied over from the LiveCD session, which is great.PCLinuxOS has mirrors located all over the world, and in order to get the fastest one for your location, there is a small tool that pings the different repo's and comes back with a list of repos, the fastest one on top. You then have the possibility to select which one you will use as standard repo. You should run the Repository Speed Test prior to updating your system.
I then did an update running Synaptic and at the same time added VLC, libdvdcss2, win32-codecs-all, Bluefish, Gambas2, Skype.
One thing I wanted to figure out, is how Skype works with my local audio, because on Ubuntu 10.04, I couldn't get Skype to recognize my Internal Mic, mainly due to the fact that Ubuntu uses Pulseaudio. In PCLinuxOS no problems whatsoever and a test call worked out of the box.
Then I used Pinocs AddLocale to set my desktop in Dutch. At the end of this process the system is restarted.
On the desktop, you'll find a icon labeled 'GetOpenOffice' that will pull the openOffice suite from the repos localized in the language you want. This is a nice feature as not everybody needs openOffice, and the that space is then reclaimed by other niceties that you find on the LiveCD.
Twitter and Identi.ca are managed using Choqok which is installed by default as is Dropbox. A very nice touch !!
KDE4
I have never felt comfortable with KDE4, but PCLinuxOS tweaks the desktop in such a way, that KDE3 users are not at all lost. I must agree that it is one of the best KDE4 desktop I've seen so far.The menu is the standard KDE3 menu, but after unlocking the widgets on the panel, you can change the menu to the Kickoff version if that is the one you prefer.
I added some widgets on the panel, but I couldn't find a meteo widget that worked on the panel.
Maintenance
Al user-centric settings are easily configured using the computer settings module, which is just a click away. The icon, represented by a toolset is on the panel, and by clicking it, you can tweak as much as you like from simple fonts to themes and Samba.The PCLinuxOS Control Center is still there for more administrator like stuff. It is a proven concept and there is really no need to change it.
Rolling Release
This time I had to do a reinstall of PCLinuxOS, I will not have to do another one, as PCLinuxOS is known for its Rolling Release principle which has proven itself time and time again. On the road
My laptop has around 880 Mb of free RAM and KDE4 is doing fine. I experience no response difference between running PCLinuxOS KDE4 and Ubuntu 10.04 on this box. Only when booting I have a feeling that Ubuntu boots a little bit faster, but that is not important to me. It is how the system works and PCLinuxOS beats Ubuntu, as I find KDE4 (KDE 4.4.4) mature, stable and more user-friendly than the current Gnome.If you stick to KDE-centric applications (I installed Kopete and dropped Pidgin, installed KMail and dropped Thunderbird, ...) you have a homogeneous group of software tools, that simply do their job. Some even are above par (Amarok, DigiKam, K3B, ...).
Another thing that surprised me, is that the software found in the PCLinuxOS repos is more up to date than the one in the Ubuntu repos. Gambas comes with version 2.20 while on Ubuntu it is still version 2.19 and the same goes for Bluefish where PCLinuxOS presents us the latest version 2.0.0. As far as I'm concerned and the applications that I use, I am running a bleeding edge distro, but YMMV.
Community
The US forum has a nice feel, and you find many competent posters over there. Our Dutch PCLinuxOS community can rely on support from the US guys if needed.The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a monthly masterpiece brought to you by Parnote and his team, based on inputs from the community.
64-bit
There isn't a 64-bit version yet, but the PAE kernel supports up to 64 gigabytes of memory. Just make sure you have that kernel installed and your 4 GB+ machine will use all of your extra RAM.Final thoughts
PCLinuxOS 2010.1 KDE4 is a rock solid distro - just in my case I had a problem with the LiveCD, but not with the installed version - which offers a KDE4 DE tailored to newcomers and KDE-geeks alike.Maybe a DVD version with KdePim installed and Kopete and openOffice would be nice, but hey, you can make such a remaster yourself (see this topic on their forum)
The wait was long, but the result is typically Texstar:
It is ready when it is ready ...but what you get it is really a top notch distro.
5 reactions:
Damn you got me scared for a bit there. I have the same laptop as my current laptop. And trying to move from the boring, old-looking Ubuntu+GNOME desktop to something more modern and people suggested me to try Mandriva, PCLinuxOS or Pardus with KDE 4 desktop. PCLinuxOS was the first I got the link to download so I'm just getting it to try it out. BTW did you report this bug to PCLinuxOS developers so that they can fix it for later?
@Komac: Thanks for your comment. Regarding the videodriver bug, I did. They will pick it up in due time, but in the meantime, the solution as stated here works fine.
Thanks for your kind words about PCLinuxOS. Sorry the graphics didn't work out of the box for you, but glad that you reported the problem to the board, and published a solution. Most things are fixable in Linux and the option to run "pcc" or "drakconf" from the command line on logging into a text terminal gives you plenty of things to try to resolve the problem. Maybe we need a HOW-TO on that. Of the very small amount of hardware that may cause a startup problem, this may help many users.
I'm glad that, having resolved the problem, you found that PCLinuxOS worked well and met your needs. For most people it will work out of the box, and it's the ongoing experience that will decide whether it's a "keeper". It's a great introduction to Linux, at the same time, it's powerful enough to stick with as you gain more knowledge.
A particular ACER laptop used to do some weird things a couple of versions ago, which required a bit of hacking before installation, it now works out of the box. Every so often a bit of hardware does this. It's by reporting the little bits that don't work, that we resolve this problems for the next guy.
So thanks again!
One of the best distos I've ever used for any user (especially for beginners beside Mint and Pardus), there is PCLinuxOS FullMonty Edition if you want a wealth bunch of apps.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,73118.0.html.
thank you for the nice review.
"I couldn't find a meteo widget that worked on the panel."
Try yawp and configure it to show 0 days ahead when it is on panel.
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