Linux Format forums

Re: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

ryptyde — Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:34 pm

Author: ryptyde

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:34 pm

nelz wrote:

Quote:

It would more likely be the nvidia version, as that appears to work with non-nvidia graphics cards too.

0.9 may well appear on a subsequent disc. There's no room for 0.81 this month. Even if there was it would probably be out of date by the time the magazine came out.

I'll be looking forward to trying it out this summer as with anything else you can throw at me.

Re: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

davecs — Mon Apr 25, 2005 2:59 pm

Author: davecs

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 2:59 pm

I stand corrected!!!

I have updated my v0.81a to virtually-v0.9 with via synaptic, also upgrading the kernel, and correcting problems manually. The updates are so many now, that it would be like downloading another disk-full, so I would hang on if starting from scratch.

I have to report that the HAL/DBUS system works a lot better than I thought it would.

Re: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

nelz — Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:37 pm

Author: nelz

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:37 pm

davecs wrote:

I doubt it!

Why? It's been on the cover disc before.

davecs wrote:

Anyhow, if it is, it would most likely be a vanilla version .81a.

Re: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

davecs — Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:52 pm

Author: davecs

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:52 pm

ryptyde wrote:

OK,my interest has been tweaked will PCLOS be on a cover disc soon?

I doubt it! Anyhow, if it is, it would most likely be a vanilla version .81a.

You can download the iso, go to the following site:

www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos

Pick the iso that goes with your graphics card: ATi, NV, or plain. Print out the installation instructions and the "cheat codes" before you start.

Wait until version 0.9 comes out any time now, the guys are just correcting a few problems and it will be worth the wait.

Re: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

ryptyde — Mon Apr 25, 2005 3:52 am

Author: ryptyde

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 3:52 am

OK,my interest has been tweaked will PCLOS be on a cover disc soon?

Re: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

davecs — Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:36 am

Author: davecs

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:36 am

I started this fight! ( )

I have both Gentoo and PCLinuxOS installed on my desktop. I keep Gentoo, and I like to use a spare partition for testing other distros, but I can't bear to let PCLinuxOS go!

I have this to say about PCLOS:

1 - Firefox has every media player needed included out of the box. Go to BBC Radio and it just plays. As does Streaming Video.

2 - It has IRC clients, File sharing clients, and a great selection of software installed. Everything seems to be aimed at integration.

3 - You can update with apt-get, synaptic or kpackage and they all have their uses.

4 - The repository is up to date. At present, there is a 2.6.11 kernel and KDE3.4, Rosegarden-4 v1.0, Scribus 1.2.1, if it's there it's nearly always up to date.

5 - It uses original artwork, there's a guy in South America who contributes loads of stuff. As a result KDE is not overblown and is toned down and tasteful!

6 - It installs from a LiveCD and there are three flavours, ATi, nVidia and vanilla.

Bad Points:

1 - On my laptop with a synaptic mouse pad, for some reason it gets the X config file a bit wrong on install, and I had to correct it in PCLOS control centre. And I had to change the choice of sound driver to get sound to work. Took me ... ohhhh ... all of 10 minutes, but I can see that it may have foxed someone with less experience.

2 - It needs 256Mb RAM to run as a live CD and that is the only simple way of installing it.

3 - On my desktop it is making it difficult for me to get Timidity++ running as a daemon.

OVERALL

It is still at a BETA stage. Texstar and his team are preparing a pre-release 0.9 which promises KDE3.4, and a kernel built around the HAL/DBUS system for mounting plugged-in devices. And in the case of writable devices, unmounting them. No more write-behind problems which is why I dropped supermount!

If you regard it as a fork from Mandrake 9.2, it has gone where Mandrake should have. There is still a little work to do, but if your hardware is amongst the majority of stuff where it works right out the box, it is just the job for a Linux newbie.

Oh, and Texstar is such a perfectionist that I don't expect we'll see anything called v1.0 until it's perfect!

it installs pclos???

helios — Sun Apr 24, 2005 11:25 pm

Author: helios

Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2005 11:25 pm

As mentioned above, the magazine was dead wrong in publishing the fact that pclos was not an installable OS. I have it installed on over 20 business computers on a 3 city network...AND THAT is what started this whole thing...Linux Format stating in a head to head with knoppix that PCLinuxOS could not be installed to the HD. PCLOS kicks Knoppix to the curb as far as a hd distro...but I repeat myself

helios

Got the live cd, tried it, not bad

ggreaves — Sun Apr 24, 2005 8:34 pm

Author: ggreaves

Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2005 8:34 pm

After reading all the 'hype' counter claims etc. I though I'd get the live cd of PCLinuxOS and have a go.
It struggled a bit on a Dell Inspiron 8200, it failed to start the sound on a Dell Optiplex GX1 PII 400, rather old huh. All in all not bad really. Except for the non-mouse response in Shisen-Sho after coming out of sleep state, it may very well be my choice replacement for SUSE.
BTW there is a "Livecd- Install" icon on the desktop, what does that do?

bingo

helios — Thu Apr 14, 2005 10:08 pm

Author: helios

Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 10:08 pm

for as smart as I consider myself to be, I didn't think about that and the point is taken. What I am hoping for, and I see PCLOS heading in this direction, is a distro for the everyday user. Now I know you and I are familiar with emacs, but outside of those who use them...who else would. there are linux distros with all sorts of exotic applications on them, many of them redundant, but I guess that is what makes Linux...well Linux. I don't see it boiling down anytime soon as at the last count there were over 380 active distros. sheesh, I like choice but dang...

Now apt-get is as drop-dead easy as it can get but I think until we get point and click installation, its gonna be a uphill battle for new, steady users. I think we are seeing a general steering toward this with klik and kano's scripts. I just hope we continue to progress in this direction.

helios

RE: is this a fanboi competition?

fingers99 — Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:23 pm

Author: fingers99

Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:23 pm

Quote:

I do have a question for you though...why would I want to adjust my sources.list file to make mplayer or mplayer-plugin work? Thats silly. Boot the damn machine and go to work.

Simple really, there just isn't enough space for it on the CD. I'd guess that were hard choices to make. For example, I'd prefer to have Supertux (which is on Kanotix) and Lyx (which used to be on Knoppix and has never been on Kanopix) rather than the evil which is emacs, but whatever the choice, even compressed, 700Mb just ain't going to be enough for everything.

is this a fanboi competition?

helios — Thu Apr 14, 2005 7:13 pm

Author: helios

Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 7:13 pm

You are not going to believe anything I post here anyway, so my suggestion to you is make some space on your second hd and see for yourself. Thats what I did and the subsequent results led to my divorce from kanotix...Now I really, Really like kanotix, but as far as polish and ease of use, it can not compete. See, you might believe everyone who installs linux has hour upon hour to learn our processes. Let me ask you something. When you first drove a car, did you have to crawl under the dash or open the hood to get the radio to work? No, you turned a knob or pushed a button and it just worked. PCLinuxOS and mepis, maybe one or two more distros are like that...they just work. Whether you agree with it or not, the fact is that linux will never seriously compete with windows if we dont put away the "Old School" philosophies and make this OS user-friendly. Geeks and techno-freaks like me will always have gentoo and slack, but for the masses...we really need to address the usability issues. It's not everyone that has the time to spend in tweaksville. As much as I personally enjoy it, I do not think the majority of Linux converts will. I do have a question for you though...why would I want to adjust my sources.list file to make mplayer or mplayer-plugin work? Thats silly. Boot the damn machine and go to work. Hobbiests can tweak all they want...some of us don't have the luxury of time. PCLinuxOS is not a commerical distro btw...free as in beer and as in freedom. I know we all get stuck in our ways and ideas but there are times when something else just does it better. Respected magazines should know their subject matter a bit better before they publish untruths. Now THAT smacks of Fanboi-ism.

BTW...I do run mepis on my 2nd hd...Debian will always be my mistress

helios

RE: Re: RE: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

fingers99 — Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:33 pm

Author: fingers99

Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:33 pm

I can't comment on PCLinuxOS -- I've never tried it and probably never will. My current set up suits me more than any commercial distro I've tried.

Quote:

I do not have to scour the web for the proper mplayer debs or rpms

Just add

#multimedia
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main

to /etc/apt/sources.list and MPlayer (and all the "exotic" multimedia stuff) is yours for the asking. I thought everyone knew that

Quote:

Oh and by the way...is kanotix and knoppix still breaking after apt-get upgrade? If I remember correctly, there was a small problem with that.....

AFAIK, there never has been a problem with Kanotix -- after all, it's nearly 100% Sid. The problem with Knoppix can be resolved: the answer is at the very top of /etc/apt/sources.list.

Quote:

people around here will understand that our package system works just as well and gives us just as many choices as the debian-based distros.

OK, so prove it...........................

RE: Re: RE: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

helios — Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:38 pm

Author: helios

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:38 pm

Having only been a linux user for a year, I have learned quickly. My first hard drive distro was knoppix then a quick switch to kanotix. My hat off to Mr Knoppler and kano. Both are fine efforts, however there seems to be some misunderstanding in the above posts concerning PCLinuxOS. There certainly is a problem with a recent magazine article stating that PCLinuxOS was not meant to be a hard drive install. Someone round up that author and administer the proper beating. It's hard to take a publication seriously when blatent mistakes like that are made.

Now...flame suit ON: It took a friend of mine two months to even look at the PCLOS live cd. I love debian-based distros and could never see myself using anything else, however once I did install PCLOS to my hd...well opinions change it seems. First, PCLOS is only in its beta stages and out-performs many of the proprietary distros. It does this in a few ways. First, It has my nvidia drivers pre-configured and ready to go on reboot. Second, I do not have to scour the web for the proper mplayer debs or rpms to get my favorite newsclip in foxnews to play...it just works. As far as software choices go, we do very well over at PCLOS. I have not wanted for anything, and Tex makes sure the newest software is available immediately. Now, let me clear one important thing up. In PCLOS, I am just as able to use apt-get as any debian user. dpkg is replaced with a similar command and dependencies are no longer a problem. People who drag out these old arguements have either not looked at it lately or are just too stuck in their ways to admit that something else is better than what they have now. I myself was guilty of that until I finally gave PCLinuxOS a look. So, hopefully the mag will straighten out their mistake and people around here will understand that our package system works just as well and gives us just as many choices as the debian-based distros. Oh and by the way...is kanotix and knoppix still breaking after apt-get upgrade? If I remember correctly, there was a small problem with that.....

helios

RE: Re: RE: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

towy71 — Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:22 pm

Author: towy71

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:22 pm

RMS has a bust up with someone "quelle surprise"

RE: Re: RE: PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and LXF64

fingers99 — Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:11 pm

Author: fingers99

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:11 pm

Quote:

Debian has problems there due to its commitment to GPL-only, and not using other free (as in beer) licences.

Not so; I have lots of stuff from unfree, including IIRC, Squeak, giflib, Grokking the Gimp, the nVidia stuff........ The old myth was that Debian didn't touch non GPL packages (in fact, that was the cause of a big bust up between RMS and Klaus Knopper -- although I don't think Klaus ever responded) but there are an aweful lot out there.