Posted on Monday 30th of April 2007 at 14:08 in Linux

Review of PCLinuxOS 2007 Test Release 4

I find it hard to explain why I love PClinuxOS as much as I do, especially considering the other day when I decided to drop into Ubuntu to perform some basic tasks. PCLinuxOS is an excellent release and PCLOS2007 is looking like a real contender for most usable Linux 2007. Let's see how test release 4 behaves.

I last visited PCLinuxOS when reviewing the beta 2 release in mid-March. This test 4 edition was released only a couple of days ago so it only seems right to give one of the most usable distros around another poke.

A few problems initially
While something that most users shouldn't encounter; because I'm reviewing from a VMWare session PCLOS refused to install on the traditional SCSI virtual drive, instead only working on an IDE. I only find this worth mentioning because the previous release I reviewed had no issues with an SCSI setup - so if you're going to play with it in VMWare this is worth remembering.

So let's get into reviewing PCLinuxOS 2007

PCLinuxOS has always focused on giving a more complete out of the box experience while remaining true to offering an intuitive user experience; suitable for those who aren't confident in the Terminal.

Aesthetics
It's always been a handsome release and there's little to say once you've seen the screenshots:

pclos desktop

Networking to my current network
Something that has impressed me a lot with recent releases (such as Ubuntu which I covered in my recent review of Feisty Fawn) is the presence of the NTFS R/W driver. In Feisty this meant that you could connect directly to a Samba share and access files directly from there; so I was interested whether PCLOS offers the same functionality.

Unfortunately PCLinuxOS wasn't as easy with it's Samba share access (something I hope gets resolved before the final release); offering me the small consolation of an error message.

This left me to connect to my home network via FTP (as I would normally). Grabbing a video file is nice and simple once I've used Synaptic to download my FTP client of choice (GFTP). Now will PCLOS2007 T4 play the video without issue as the beta2 release did?

Playing the video
Double clicking on my newly downloaded video of Futurama (3x02 Parasites Lost if you're interested) resulted in a flawless playing. PCLOS clearly has popular/common codecs preloaded and this is a fundamental thing for out of the box performance.

I don't want to have to find out what I'm missing, find a download URL and spend an hour faffing around resolving conflicts (as you do in Windows XP). Ubuntu Feisty Fawn has a nice attitude to resolving this by not preloading codecs but supplying them on demand. PCLinuxOS however takes the out-of-the-box experience approach and provides common ones directly post-install. I would love to say what happens when PCLOS stumbles into a video file that it doesn't have codecs for but I've not encountered that situation just yet.

Control Centre
One of my favourite aspects of PCLOS is the comprehensive yet easy Control Centre.

The control centre allows you to change most aspects of the sytem in a very "Windowsy" way. It's all point and click stuff and will go as advanced as you let it. There are options from setting up a web server to modifying the graphical theme you see upon boot. This is one of the nice things about KDE I suppose; there's just so much customisability. To PCLOS' credit it does make the entire process astonishingly easy.

Out of the box software
Another nice feature of out-of-the-box releases such as PCLOS is the functionality that you can get directly after the install. All the familiar faces are here such as OpenOffice.org, GIMP Amarok, Mplayer and more. This means that you could probably install PCLOS and live happily ever after without needing an Internet connection.

That's what really sets PCLOS apart from things like Ubuntu; their radically different approaches to desktop Linux. So here are my conclusions:

It really is shaping up to be a marvelous release. The more time you spend browsing around and just undertaking normal day-to-day tasks you realise how much work has gone into this. It feels polished and adaptable in ways that I probably can't even imagine. Sure KDE isn't as quick or scalable as Gnome or XCFE but it is more customisable than most. I find KDE more intuitive than Gnome too (although many would disagree) and I think that PCLinuxOS2007 is going to put up a hard fight for the most usable Linux 2007 title. Now it's just a case of waiting for the final release and giving it a full critique.

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Comments

Showing most recent 20 of 23 comments [View all comments]

i like pclinuxos. most shortcomings have been due to my own "noob" status. important thing is that my wife and kids like it enough that i might be able to get rid of all but one Windoze box.

after using ubuntu for 8 months, i almost feel guilty that pclinux is so easy to use. i spend much less time at the command line.

hats off to texstar and the ripper gang!

gardawg

Hats off to PCLinuxOS 2007. Went through manmath sahu’s blog on tweaking pclinuxos at http://pclinuxos2007.blogspot.com
and waiting for its gnome version.

krushna panda

AUTHOR COMMENT
Thanks Harpo,

In addition "Geoff", thanks for the "(that is what the TR in the name means)" in your post. I’d never have worked that out.

Oh hang on, introduction paragraph "Let’s see how test release 4 behaves."

Forgive the rudeness but I abhor people who are too lazy to form their opinions properly. Read the content and then comment, don’t read until you see one word that could possibly be negative and try to flame.

Seopher

[GeoffB]

You’re full of ****. Read the review before you decide the author has "condemned" it. There’s nothing of the kind here.

I bet you’re the useless kind of person who reads the first ****ing paragraph and then decide to make your conclusions. You’re the kind of person who gives those of us in the community a bad name.

Harpo

AUTHOR COMMENT
> Geoff

Thanks for the lovely comment, I appreciate well thought out feedback. Sorry for slating the release so much by saying things like:

"It really is shaping up to be a marvelous release."

and

"It feels polished and adaptable in ways that I probably can’t even imagine."

and maybe even my clear acceptance of it being a test release

"Now it’s just a case of waiting for the final release and giving it a full critique."

So please Geoff, read the article and some of the other material surrounding the review before deciding to write a comment.

This is a test release (that is what the TR in the name means). PcLinuxOS 2007 should not be reviewed and condemned because of a few flaws that will be gone when it reaches Final. The whole point of test releases is to find the bugs. If you are going to test and review a distro why do it in a VM, that will never show the full potential of any distro, On that point alone your review is pointless and invalid.

Geoff

GeoffB

"...is the presence of the NTFS R/W driver. In Feisty this meant that you could connect directly to a Samba share and access files directly from there."

Please don’t mix NTFS R/W driver (which allows access to hard drives/file systems on your local machine) AND network (samba) shares (handling of file system is done by host - you work with files, not file systems) -> you don’t need NTFS for Samba shares!

best wishes :-)

Anton Asche

Hi,
mplayer and kplayer work fine, but kaffeine or xine cause bad pixelation on playing wmv files, and I thik there are driver or library conflicts, perhaps of realplayer origin.
This seems to happen in Kubuntu too after installing Gxine, ad other libraries including realplayer ones.
It is shaping up to be a fine release other than a few glitches that are probably not Tex’s fault.
Best

Zos

As i have just jumped to Linux from Windows, (still have dual boot), i found that some hardware did not work. like Printer Cannon IP4300, for my laptop which is Asus A6J 1gb Ram, DualCore t2300, the wireless didnt want to work. if the problem doesnt get fixed this is going to he sad because there are a few people with these specs that cant get em to work. my Email dalivor01@optusnet.com.au and ph +61414755105 if anyone has information or good video tutorials for linux and Java jdk programing. After all its a good distro and they will do their best.

Dado

I am a real fan of PCLinuxOS "Big Daddy - 0.93a". I have tested quite a few Linux distros and this one does everything I want. I hope Texstar and the other experts slow down a bit. I have tried both TR-3 and TR-4 and I find them to be more and more buggy and difficult to use as time goes on. In fact, I have dumped both TR-3 and TR-4 and gone back to :Big Daddy" because I couldn’t get simple things like external USB hard drives and PCMCIA wireless cards to work which were no problem before. I think this distro has a lot of potential -- please don’t try so hard to meet schedules that you progress backwards any more!!

Don Metzger

(...) Unfortunately PCLinuxOS wasn’t as easy with it’s Samba share access (something I hope gets resolved before the final release); offering me the small consolation of an error message. (...)

The PCLinusOS NTFS R/W driver it’s working perfectly well. I did the same test as you did (virtual machine also) and the access to smb://domainuser@machine/D$/lixo … went quite well. Perhaps the problem is with your network. :)

QueSeca

PCLinuxOS look nice and things seem to work very well from the new linux user’s point of view.

Mine is a Mandriva/mandrake user’s.
I do not see that much differences beetween Mandriva 2007 spring (free edition with non-free official repos) and PCLinuxOS 2007. I know that
there are many things different inside the distros but from a user’s point of view they seem to be very
few.

Since the last Mandriva is really good on the laptops (suspend to disk out of the box for me), I hope
that some of you will give try to the magic Mandrake ehhhhh.....well....Mandriva.

PCLinuxOS and Mandriva should become more and more popular and offer an alternative to Ubuntu
and Suse.

regards,
jean

jean

The easiest distro for newbies like me,
No real problems!! I love Linux, I love PclinuxOS

Kees

I’ve been a PCLOS user since 0.93a "Junior". It replaced my Kanotix...which I love for bringing me to and keeping me at the Linux table. I have tried and tested personally every one of the top 20 distros maybe more and really nothing has come close to it in it’s hardware friendliness. Yes that include Ubuntu. I have been searching for a Gnome distro that just is as friendly and easy as PCLOS. Mint came close but like Ubuntu I could not set up wireless. I never test these in VMWARE and I truly don’t understand someone being able to post a true critique from that sort of experience. Maybe that is akin to reviewing "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy after watching it on your video ipod. Come on guys! we want REAL reviews not Virtual ones.

beany

Two issues with PCLinuxOS 2007 TR4:
Ugly fonts and WPA wireless encryption. I wish I could easily switch back to the networkManager and KnetworkManager combo just like in Mepis.

Thibje

Have been using previous version for last few years. Constantly on the
lookout for a better experience, but keep coming back to PCLOS. TR4
looks and feels fantastic. Puppy is still the fastest on my old Dell
PIII notebook, but PCLOS comes in at a close second. Video always
worked well and looked good, new version looks even better.

Can’t wait for the final product.. hope my $20 will help with the dev. costs
:)

SteveWIn

always a fun and smart distro for everyday use. pc linux os never gives me that feeling of uncertainty of what can go wrong next, but in fact it’s the exact opposite.

mark

I have been using this os since test 3 and have no problems with fonts it looks pretty much
the same as my pld Suse system that I abandoned due to the Novell issue.
As for samba shares I use the included smb4k programe which seem to be very stable.
Ntfs rw is looked after by fuse/ntfs-3g which also works very well.
I have had problems with one or more of rhese in other distros.
Full marks to Tex and the ripper team!

berthiggins

I’ve been using PCLOS previous release for about several months on my desktop and for me it’s a marvellous OS for replacing Windows. As far as hardware recognition goes, it detected all my hardware flawlessly. PCLOS is easy to tailor, has nice looks, comes with a lot of softwares, great control center, easy to add softwares using synaptic ( dependencies are well taken care of ), etc.,. And from other distros that I’ve tried ( although not the latest one ) , namely Mandriva, Ubuntu 6, Mint 2.2, Knoppix, SuSe, etc., PCLOS is the most suitable for my needs, but I believe each one’s needs are different ........ :-D

Adri F.

How much available software does it have it the repositories compared to Ubuntu or Mandriva?

joe

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Review of PCLinuxOS 2007 Test Release 4

So let's get into reviewing PCLinuxOS 2007

That's what really sets PCLOS apart from things like Ubuntu; their radically different approaches to desktop Linux. So here are my conclusions: