Pclos 2010

Gullible Jones · 2010-04-26 17:46:11

Sure, you probably think it's strange that I'm posting about this "user-friendly" desktop-centric distro that doesn't support 64-bit yet. And yes, it's been fairly rubbishy for a while, even compared to its bug-ridden parent Mandriva.

But I'm posting from the 2010 release at the moment (LXDE version) and I love it.

The good:
- Amazingly, it has no obvious bugs by default. This in itself is a huge advantage over most desktop distros, most of which present fairly obvious bugginess in the default setup.
- It has GCC installed by default. As far as I know none of the other RPM or DEB based desktop distros do that, which is too bad because it makes things much friendlier for developers.
- Not only is Chromium in the main repo, SRWare Iron is too!
- It is fast. Boots in ~20 seconds on my netbook, which is saying a lot, because the netbook has a pitiful processor. This is noticeably faster than Mandriva with LXDE. And it's more responsive and uses less memory than Windows XP, my previous first (if somewhat crippled) choice for the netbook.

The bad:
- Firewall software is not installed by default. This is the only thing about it that is bad enough to be considered outright stupid, IMO; Shorewall is small, there's no reason it couldn't be included on the CD.
- Compared to e.g. Ubuntu, it doesn't look very "smooth" or professional; the bootsplash looks kind of klunky and the default theme is not great. This might lead a novice user to think it's sloppier than it really is.
- No PDF reader by default. This is easily corrected, but not so great for novices.
- Likewise, Firefox is the default browser, which isn't so great for old computers.

The ugly:
- libtxc_dxtn is in the main repos. While very convenient, this worries me quite a bit, because libtxc violates some software patents. If the owner of said patents (not sure who now, Intel or VIA I think) decided to put its foot down, things would get pretty bad for PCLOS. IMHO stuff like this should be in some kind of separate community or multimedia repo.

(Mind, I do think software patents are quite silly. Alas, many governments don't. )

I'm not sure I'd recommend this for novices, but for Windows "power users" migrating a Windows XP machine to Linux it's probably a good choice. Lack of 64-bit support means it isn't so great for more powerful machines, but the LXDE version is absolutely perfect for 32-bit netbooks (even if it's a little ugly), and the Gnome or KDE version would probably good for e.g. an Athlon XP or Pentium 4 desktop.

Edit: Oh one more thing... Hibernate on PCLOS 2010 not only faster than Arch or Debian on both suspend and resume, it's (again) faster than Windows XP. I don't know why that's the case, but it's fairly impressive.

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2010-04-26 17:47:43)

axel668 · 2010-04-26 17:56:36

Gullible Jones wrote:

Sure, you probably think it's strange that I'm posting about this "user-friendly" desktop-centric distro that doesn't support 64-bit yet. And yes, it's been fairly rubbishy for a while, even compared to its bug-ridden parent Mandriva.

Nah, not strange at all ...
Unless ...
*looks around
This is the Arch forum, right ?!?

Just kidding, still looking for something to install on my wife's 2003 laptop, so this might prove valuable information !!

Last edited by axel668 (2010-04-26 17:57:32)

na12 · 2010-04-26 20:37:39

Ha ha ha,faster than arch ha ha ha,you probably tested other version than I.Nothing is faster than arch,remember that.

Gullible Jones · 2010-04-26 20:38:27

Well... I brought up the libtxc_dxtn situation on their forum, and annoyingly one of the admins removed the post and PMed me a warning, accusing me of trying to foment strife or somesuch and saying that all software in the repos is legal. Well, thanks, I was only trying to help...

Edit:

na12 wrote:

Ha ha ha,faster than arch ha ha ha,you probably tested other version than I.Nothing is faster than arch,remember that.

Actually Debian Testing boots a bit faster than Arch at the moment. Thank you insserv.

(I find Testing to be buggy enough that I don't use it though; it's simply not reliable like Arch or Debian Stable are.)

Edit again: it turns out PCLOS is hosted in the US, which means their hosting of libtxc_dxtn may in fact violate local patent law. What the hell are they playing at?!

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2010-04-26 20:46:55)

SpeedVin · 2010-04-27 17:07:54

I hear many good thing about PCLOS 2010... I think it's will be nice to test it ,but you said "the bootsplash looks kind of klunky and the default theme is not great" when you install NVIDIA or ATI binary drivers the bootsplas is ugly in Ubuntu/Kubuntu and other's Ubuntu based distros...(But I think it will be fixed).

Last edited by SpeedVin (2010-04-27 17:08:07)

Misfit138 · 2010-04-27 18:38:40

Gullible Jones wrote:

Well... I brought up the libtxc_dxtn situation on their forum, and annoyingly one of the admins removed the post and PMed me a warning, accusing me of trying to foment strife or somesuch and saying that all software in the repos is legal. Well, thanks, I was only trying to help...

I was going to respond by pointing out something to this effect, but your post made my point well enough, I suppose.
I used PCLOS before I moved to Arch, about 5 years ago, and it was a similar situation; website news would lay dormant for months at a time, developer infighting, developers going awol, and snide comments from some of the staff toward the users sometimes.
It saddened me then and now, because it always seemed to be very close to achieving a flawless OOTB experience.

Ranguvar · 2010-04-29 00:52:15

I've always been turned away by the badly designed (IMO) website and rather tacky (again, IMO) logos and such.
Never really tried it, guess I should...

Llama · 2010-04-29 11:25:58

As for being 'rubbishy for a while': the period suspiciously coincides with Bob Reynolds illness. That's enlightened dictatorship model for you.

With respect to 'patent violations': if you care for your less than advanced user, you probably have to violate this and that once in a while. PCLinuxOS delivers a unique OOB experience; it's the only case where you can actually, real life style, manage your packages without a resort to CLI ever. The only other user friendly distro whith the same degree of robustness is Pardus, but no competition here, at present: Pardus repositories are a bit sparse. Your newbie will have to learn how to build his own packages right from the start, and no AUR for him...

JohannesSM64 · 2010-04-29 11:50:37

So does PCLOS have anything over Arch, besides the automatic-install-and-configure-everything and CLI-hater-friendly GUI package manager?
edit: just saw this:

Hibernate on PCLOS 2010 not only faster than Arch or Debian on both suspend and resume, it's (again) faster than Windows XP.

Does anyone know why?

Last edited by JohannesSM64 (2010-04-29 11:52:30)

Llama · 2010-04-29 13:30:16

JohannesSM64 wrote:

So does PCLOS have anything over Arch, besides the automatic-install-and-configure-everything and CLI-hater-friendly GUI package manager?

No, it does not. It's for newbies/busy people, just as advertized.

Gullible Jones · 2010-05-01 20:40:59

Re the faster hibernate and wakeup, that may be because of kernel optimizations. I know they use the BFS scheduler.

Llama wrote:

With respect to 'patent violations': if you care for your less than advanced user, you probably have to violate this and that once in a while. PCLinuxOS delivers a unique OOB experience; it's the only case where you can actually, real life style, manage your packages without a resort to CLI ever. The only other user friendly distro whith the same degree of robustness is Pardus, but no competition here, at present: Pardus repositories are a bit sparse. Your newbie will have to learn how to build his own packages right from the start, and no AUR for him...

I wouldn't call the OOB experience of PCLOS "unique", OpenSuSE seems to me to be about parallel with it. It's just that OpenSuSE is incredibly bloated, to the point that it barely works on cheap hardware.

(True, that problem does seem to be getting some dev attention as of late, but it's still far too heavy to work properly on my netbook. Whereas PCLOS, even the KDE version, is relatively light. Not Arch-with-Fluxbox light, but still.)

Mind, I do think PCLOS is pretty good, despite "unprofessional" appearances. I just also happen to think that some of the developers are jerks.

Llama · 2010-05-02 02:07:31

Gullible Jones wrote:

I wouldn't call the OOB experience of PCLOS "unique", OpenSuSE seems to me to be about parallel with it. It's just that OpenSuSE is incredibly bloated, to the point that it barely works on cheap hardware.

I would. Among other things, PCLOS always (as early as 2007) automounted (USB) NTFS partitions right out of the box perfectly (really mounted, and really in utf8; that I would call 'attention to detail'), which wasn't the case with any other distro, including OpenSUSE. No glory in doing so today: the issue's been fixed upstream, at last.

Gullible Jones wrote:

Mind, I do think PCLOS is pretty good, despite "unprofessional" appearances. I just also happen to think that some of the developers are jerks.

Are they developers, of just mods ?

Last edited by Llama (2010-05-02 02:08:37)

scarecrow · 2010-05-06 13:24:18

Aye, PCLOS is a pretty good newbie distro- most probably the easiest to handle.
AFAIK it has no ties to Mandriva right now- the packaging is totally independent, and the only thing in common are the RPM package base and the Mandriva Control Center, which is heavily customized in PCLOS.
All that said, the lack of 64-bit binaries as well as no support for partition encryption (excluding /home) make it unsuitable for power users. And the other thing which is worrisome is that it's effectively one-man-show. If mr. Reynolds retires, then it's future isn't terribly bright.

Strider · 2010-07-23 18:23:05

Hi there,

I just tried out PCLinuxOS 2010.07 the other night. Looked interesting ... maybe better than Arch

I booted the live CD and was at same time impressed an unimpressed. PCLinuxOS is apparently able to support a lot of hardware OOB. And indeed it recognized my USB dongle (based on ralink 2870) and that impressed me. I just had to typ my pre-shared key and I was ready to surf. And indeed, I didn't use any CLI (not that I mind using it but for newbies this can be a showstopper).

But then came the unexpected. I have a 24 inch wide screen monitor that supports up to 1920*1200. I was only at 1600*1200. I tried upgrading the resolution and got a blank screen. After searching a bit, I found out that the ATI driver PCLOS picked for my videocard was outdated. So I thought no problem, I'll use the one that comes with Xorg : xf86-video-ati is a pretty good driver at the moment (I have a 4850 card) but again that didn't work. Via synaptic I searched for version of Xorg and found out they were on ... 1.6.5 ! No kidding ! That's the price you pay when you want to keep up with the video drivers of ATI and do not adapt anything to your xserver.

Then another issue I encounter : I have an external sound card (M-audio USB transit) that needs a package called 'madfuload' to load firmware into the card's flash. I looked in synaptic and found it ... nowhere! This package is available in Ubuntu and Fedora (and of course Arch) already for quite some time now ...

I installed my Arch on top of lvm/raid 1 mirror combination of my 2 hard drives so I checked if this was possible with PCLinuxOS : nada

My distro hopping is now certainly over : Arch is here to stay !

Last edited by Strider (2010-07-23 18:24:27)

Army · 2010-07-23 19:11:03

For the problem with your M-Audio Transit (I have this card too, great little toy ) you could copy these udev rules and firmware files per hand, they won't change in the future, so there's no "real" need to install them with the package management (although it's of course still better). But of course it would be nice to have this package in PCLinuxOS. But I don't care, this is no distro I give a damn about. My only alternative might be *BSD sometime, but ... no, not right now.

SpeedVin · 2010-07-24 14:03:09

JohannesSM64 wrote:

So does PCLOS have anything over Arch, besides the automatic-install-and-configure-everything and CLI-hater-friendly GUI package manager?
edit: just saw this:
Hibernate on PCLOS 2010 not only faster than Arch or Debian on both suspend and resume, it's (again) faster than Windows XP.
Does anyone know why?

It has a control center like Mandriva.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-26 17:46:11

Pclos 2010

#2 2010-04-26 17:56:36

Re: Pclos 2010

#3 2010-04-26 20:37:39

Re: Pclos 2010

#4 2010-04-26 20:38:27

Re: Pclos 2010

#5 2010-04-27 17:07:54

Re: Pclos 2010

#6 2010-04-27 18:38:40

Re: Pclos 2010

#7 2010-04-29 00:52:15

Re: Pclos 2010

#8 2010-04-29 11:25:58

Re: Pclos 2010

#9 2010-04-29 11:50:37

Re: Pclos 2010

#10 2010-04-29 13:30:16

Re: Pclos 2010

#11 2010-05-01 20:40:59

Re: Pclos 2010

#12 2010-05-02 02:07:31

Re: Pclos 2010

#13 2010-05-06 13:24:18

Re: Pclos 2010

#14 2010-07-23 18:23:05

Re: Pclos 2010

#15 2010-07-23 19:11:03

Re: Pclos 2010

#16 2010-07-24 14:03:09

Re: Pclos 2010

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