Posted on Monday 22nd of January 2007 at 13:22 in Linux

A picture heavy review of PCLinuxOS 2007 Beta2

As I covered yesterday, PCLinuxOS 2007 Beta2 has been released to the public and I've had a chance to play with it and I think it's fair to make the conclusion that this is a distro worth keeping an eye on. I apologise now for the inclusion of VMWare in the screenshots.

PCLinuxOS 0.93
I was a big fan of the previous version, coated in layer upon layer of eye candy and that 'pseudo Windows' feel that you get from initially loading it up (items such as My Computer help MS users feel more at home). So I have been eagerly awaiting this release and I can't say I'm disappointed.

Prettier than a summer sunset
One of the most striking things about 0.93 was it's strong sense of aesthetics and the team have clearly upped the ante this time around with some very nice design work. As you'll be able to see from my screenshot walkthrough, there are some very nice touches.

Screenshot Walkthrough

Just to emphasise how pretty things have become and the ease of installation I have included a screenshot walkthrough of this marvellous release. Follow from left to right

LiveCD boot






 
Installation






Normal Use Screenshots



Conclusions of use
Well, as you can see in the above screenshots - media such as Youtube works straight out the box, as it were. Which is a nice touch, meaning that the 'average' user can install it and then be on their merry way browsing, chatting etc. There's no need me harping on about the joys of Synaptic either because we all know those.

Lack of 3DFX
My apologies, I was running it inside a VMWare session and it didn't seem to like the graphics setup enough to offer full 3D effects but that's irrespective, this distro continues to excell in terms of usability as far as I'm concerned. See one of the images posted yesterday from TuxMachines.org (on the right) for an example of the 3d stuff available - impressive, huh?

Conclusion
Well, it's a really impressive looking KDE distro true enough, but I still find myself unable to justify what makes it better than Kubuntu but as far as I'm concerned, being comparable to Kubuntu is one of the best places to be for a Linux distro. I think PCLOS 2007 is going to be my favourite distro for a while. It's the most intuitive, enjoyable Linux experience that I've witnessed and I urge you to give it a try if you're interested.

Shameless Plug
PCLOS07 is a great distro so you should download it and burn it to CD, even if you don't give it a go it's worth having a LiveCD lying around for the reasons noted in my article how Linux could save your life.

 

Enjoy this article? Why not subscribe to the full RSS feed?