PCLINUXOS

[pawn]

What is your opinion to PCLINUXOS ?
Greetings,
pawn.

[witek]

I tested recently LXDE version and Zen Mini version (formerly known as Gnome version but they divorced). Seems beginner friendly due to Mandriva`s GUI Center for configuring everything and multimedia working out of the box (however sound doesn`t work in my laptop - same as Salix but the fix from Salix forum worked here, too). Some packages seem a bit outdated (I expected claws mail to be 3.8). When I installed pdftk and tried to use it I got error complaining about gcj libs and I ended my tests in this moment. Anyway for an average Joe this might be interested starting point into the conquest of Linux if only they have LibreOffice in the repo (but they only seem to have a script to install the suite).

[GJones]

My opinions...

The good:
- Lots of software available.
- KDE version is quite user friendly.

The bad:
- Community versions (like Zen Mini) have sometimes been very broken in my experience.
- Package upgrades sometimes drag in dependencies that they shouldn't.
- In general the dependencies on some packages are kind of ridiculous, and (unlike in Debian) unavoidable.
- PCLOS is US based and the repos contain patent-violating software (e.g. libtxc-dxtn). This may be problematic in the future!

The ugly:
- Could be I'm just biased, but the developers' behavior has struck me as rude on some occasions.

[DavidMcCann]

In the latest KDE version, I couldn't find a keyboard shortcut for switching desktops, nor a tool for setting one. I looked for the KDE help files and they were missing. There's no office software installed: imagine downloading LibreOffice without broadband! The package management is strange: Gnucash is listed under Office, but not under Finance, and KMyMoney is listed under neither.

The Xfce version has no keyboard shortcuts, not even Alt-F4 or Alt-Tab. This was reported to the developers 2 years ago and nothing has been done. The disk still comes without a pdf viewer. This was reported 1 year ago and nothing has been done. Despite the media codecs being present, the players installed wouldn't play flv or mp3, while mp4 had no sound.

To judge from published reviews, PCLinuxOS was good when it first appeared, but it seems to have gone downhill and only retained its user-base by inertia and loyalty.