TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

The last time I looked at PCLinuxOS was version 0.92, which according to DistroWatch was about 3 years ago. I was asked to take a look at it again, so here I go.

I'm aware that this version is pretty old by now (June 2008), but as of this writing it was the latest full non-beta version available. I don't like to rant on betas. I'm puzzled to see that there has been no obvious word given on when we can expect a new version.

According to this forum post from an administrator on the PCLinuxOS forum, the group was originally gunning toward an April release, but has since not seen the light of day for two more months. I'll certainly do a rant on it as soon as it's out.

Install:

The installer is apparently a modified version of DrakLive, the Mandriva installer. When I initially set things up I told it to erase the entire harddrive. This usually gives me the least amount of trouble.

I was then told I would have to reboot to use the changes I'd made. This is an unneccesary and jarring break in the install process.

After a reboot I let the installer continue. I created my regular user and set the root password and after the install finished, rebooted again. This brought me to the logon screen.

The first time I did this I accidentally clicked on "root" instead of my regular user and didn't notice until I'd entered in my regular password and hit enter.

The error message told me login had failed, obviously. I thought "No sweat, I'll just select my regular user and try again."

However both the username and password fields were grayed out and would not allow me to try again. This is a serious bug. I had to reboot and carefully select my regular user to log in.

Once logged in, I looked around a bit. The default window decorations are made to closely resemble Windows XP, which I can't say I necessarily enjoyed.

I installed the latest Nvidia drivers with no issues. I had some difficulty figuring out how to kill X Windows until I realized I was overthinking it. All I had to do was log out and select "Console Login" for my session type. I tested the drivers with Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 1. It worked.

MP3 and MPG/WMV playback worked fine as well. I decided to see if the version of Java installed was the proper one for my version of Eclipse. I copied it off my Dev Tools CD and extracted it, and then tried running a Swing-based graphical app I wrote at work. Everything performed well.

Emboldened by my other successes, I decided to try and throw a wrench in the works and get my wireless card set up. From what I can tell, PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva (which has successfully handled my wireless before), and I was curious to see how it worked.

Once I figured out which control panel to use (see below) I was able to pop in the MS Windows driver CD and choose an open network. Surprisingly, everything worked.

Software Selection:

Firefox, OpenOffice, and GIMP were installed. Kopete replaces my preffered IM client, Pidgin. Java and GCC were installed. I was disappointed that there wasn't a single solitary game installed (even Solitaire).

Control Center offered most common configuration tasks in one spot. The layout kind of confused me, particularly for setting up my wireless internet. The "Wireless Connection" control panel did nothing, but the "Set up a new interface" panel let me get things going.

Conclusion:

For the first time in a while, I'm able to say that this distribution passed all my tests to be usable on my home desktop, Rig 2. That's no small feat, particularly for a distribution that's over a year old now. That's not to say I thought it was perfect.

This version of PCLinuxOS had bugs, and the visuals felt every bit a year old. From looking around the forums there have been several updates since its original ship date (May of 2007), so perhaps with a decent internet connection one could brush it up and make it look better.

I can't give it a perfect 4 penguin rating, but I can say that it performs all the tasks I ask of it, with minimal fuss. That's a rare accomplishment. If the next version holds up this standard, I will very seriously consider running it on my main system, Rig 4.