In 2007 one of my favorite Linux distros hit the scene, PcLinuxOS 2007 (aka PCLOS) and found it at the time to be a stellar product for it's time, stable, clean, easy to use and enjoyable. But two years have gone by with little more than updates, and a few patches. Yet now we finally have the next release of PCLOS in the wild. Will it still retain it's former glory, or has the new version ended up as a fizzling dud? Let's find out.
PCLinuxOS 2007 Screen:
PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Screen:
Just like with the previous version, PCLOS 2009.1 comes on a single CD and offers a fairly standard LiveCD environment. Current features of PCLOS 2009.1 are as follows:
KDE 3.5.10
Linux Kernel 2.6.26.8
Xorg 1.4
There is also a separate version now available called PCLOS-Gnome that includes Gnome 2.24, Gnome office apps, and many of the other features present in the KDE version. I did not get a chance to test the Gnome version, but since the only real difference between the two is the desktop environment, I'm going to assume for this review that both were essentially the same performance wise. However, I will only be focusing on the KDE version for the rest of the review.
The boot menu is fairly standard, containing the following items:
LiveCD
VideoSafeModeFBDev (a safe mode for developers)
VideoSafeModeVesa (a safe mode in case your card takes a dump)
Safeboot (an all around safe mode)
Console
Copy2Ram (the LiveCD run entirely from memory)
MediaCheck (checks your disk to be sure it's ok)
Memtest
When the system boots up into the LiveCD, interestingly enough you aren't asked for a whole lot of configuration options. Instead it merely asks you for your keyboard type, then drops you to a login prompt where you can login. There are two options, guest and root, and the login info for both is listed at the top.
One neat feature of the login screen is that, instead of the traditional KDE loading progress screen which tells you which systems have been loaded, you're instead greeted with a series of icons showing each of the major releases of PCLOS, starting at 2004 P0.4 and going through each release since right up to 2009.1 before loading the desktop completely.
Once on the desktop, you're greeted by quite a nice looking desktop with some very well done artwork and theming. The new PCLOS logo is also quite interesting, and very modern looking. The kde menu has changed in the new PCLOS and is not the naked, basic KDE menu from the previous version, but rather has been trimmed down, organized, and cleaned up into five basic categories.
Namely, "More Applications", "Internet", "Multimedia", "Office" and "System". Things are then sorted down into sub categories depending on their type and usage. The speed of the LiveCD is pretty good. Not record breaking, but certainly in the average for LiveCD's.
The list of available applications, although thinner than before, is still fairly reasonable for a LiveCD, and includes such things as Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp and others. An interesting addition to the LiveCD this time around is an included tool for making LiveUSB installations. I found this both curious and good, as the number of uses for USB Live installs is growing.
Installation
The installation starts out with a rather interesting first step. The install program asks if you'd like to remove any unnecessary drivers from the install. This essentially sets up PCLOS so that only nessisary drivers are included in the install. If you'll be changing certain hardware (ie video card, wireless or wired network card, etc) frequently, or any sooner than a year down the road, you'll want to say no here. Otherwise it won't hurt to leave the extra drivers in there. The only advantage from removing them is a slightly faster bootup and smaller install footprint.
The initial installer screen, once you're past that, is the standard Draklive installer, albeit with a new logo. The next step only allows you to choose between doing a custom partition, or use available free space, unlike other installers that also give you a third, and sometimes a fourth option, including one to use the entire disk.
Now, as a consolation, Draklive does include a warning feature that gives you the option to exit and back up your data before proceeding. The next screen gives you a custom disk partition editor that works halfway decently, but has some windowing issues and overlay problems. You're also very limited in the number of formats you can choose for your disk.
You also have to understand disk partitioning to some degree in order to use this and certainly doesn't have the point, click, next ease of use of some other distros that are newbie friendly. But if you don't mind a little fussing with disk partitions, then you're fine. Two more clicks, one of which is on a confirmation dialog, and you're on your way.
Install takes the better part of 15 minutes to complete, and aside from the partitioning thing, is really fairly easy to get through. The last two steps install the boot loader and are pretty much just click twice and you're done. After that you're advised to shut down the machine, remove the disk, and then boot into the system.
Oddly, throughout this whole process, you're never asked to setup a user and/or password. That doesn't actually show up until later during first boot. An odd way to do things for certain, but I guess it works alright.
Overview
Once you get past the final install steps and reboot, you're greeted with two boot options; either regular or safe mode. First boot is reasonably quick, although it won't set any records. As stated above, once it gets through the initial boot it asks you to setup a password for root, and then your individual users.
Once that's done, you can finally go and login. The desktop, while containing slightly less icons than the LiveCD, is essentially the same. And I mean the same across the board. There's really almost no difference between the LiveCD and the installed system. So if you boot the LiveCD, what you see is what you get if you were to go ahead with the full install.
As far as hardware is concerned, everything detected and loaded right away. I can't say how wireless works, as I didn't have any wireless hardware to test with at the time, but given recent improvements in wireless support on Linux, I'd guess that it'd be fairly good.
While testing programs, I loaded Firefox and found a rather interesting welcome page that made me grin. At the top of the browser is the title “The distro-hopper-stopperâ€, alluding to the idea that this will be the one and only distro you'll ever need. And speaking of the browser, I got a grin when I checked out the default bookmarks and found tuxmachines.org listed as one of the links. (Congrats Susan!) As a small aside, I wouldn't mind getting Raiden's Realm included in the default bookmarks of at least one distro, but that honor will come in time.
As far as the configurations screens are concerned, the KDE control center is pretty standard, and I didn't see many customizations in there. So despite the Kmenu being modified and sorted extensively, the control center is fairly virgin and pristine. The PCLOS control center shows some good improvements, including changes to how networking, firewalls, proxy, shares, and more are handled.
Multimedia support on the system is good, and the software archives included with the system are great. Of course, Synaptic, one of my favorite graphical package managers, was right there waiting to serve up whatever new programs I wanted to install.
The software load times on the system, while average, were still good. The selection of common software is also good as well. It's not as excentric as Mint or as excessive as Sabayon, or as light as MiniMe, but rather it again falls somewhere in the middle as average in selection, which really, given that PCLOS is focused towards the Windows refuge, that's not all that bad a thing.
A new user will find just enough stuff to get to work right away, without being overwhelmed, or underwhelmed, depending on which competing distro is used as the standard. One other addition I did find was Compiz. It didn't start cleanly at first, but once you get it working (mostly just a bunch of clicking and a few choice words are all that's needed. ) it appears to run fairly well.
There is a noticeable performance hit with Compiz active, but that's not all *that* surprising. I've seen that happen with other distros as well, especially given the horsepower Compiz requires to run smoothly. So on an older machine, such as my test rig, that performance difference will be clearly visible, although not crippling to what you do. On newer machines it may not even show up.
Conclusion
While slow in arriving, and a bit behind the times in some areas, PcLinuxOS 2009.1 is still a very good distribution for new users. I didn't have quite the enthusiasm for this version as I did for the original, but I still enjoyed it and found it to be a good distribution by which new users could get their feet wet and begin experiencing the Linux world.
So rest easy PCLOS Devs, your distro stays on my recommended list of distributions for new users.
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