PCLOS - A 'must try' Linux distribution

Ever since I was driven to Linux by the unfortunate mistake in thinking that upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows Me would be an improvement, I have been a dedicated Mandrake fan. Sure I have tried other distros, RedHat, Libranet and others, but always I come back to Mandrake. Not only is the Mandrake community incredibly supportive, but I find the Mandrake distro so much more 'well rounded' than the alternatives.

One of the best resources in the Mandrake community has been an individual called Texstar who ran a Linux news site called www.pclinuxonline.com and also in his spare time created RPM packages for Mandrake systems. Texstar's packages became justly famous and were widely used. Occasionally people used to ask Texstar to create his own distro, and now thanks to a project called makelivecd he has. The result is a distro called PCLOS.

What the makelivecd project has done is create a set of scripts that will take a running Linux system of about 2.4Gbytes in size, compress it, and put it onto a bootable CD which will auto configure itself for the hardware it is on. The result is a Linux distro which can be booted and run entirely from CD without writing anything to the hard drive.

So a Windows user can try out PCLOS without risk, and if they like what they see, a utility will install PCLOS in a dual boot environment alongside Windows on the hard drive.

The concept is similar to the popular Knoppix live CD. Where PCLOS differs from Knoppix is that PCLOS is based on Mandrake RPMs while Knoppix is based on Debian. Whereas a normal Mandrake install leaves some tasks for the user to complete, PCLOS is tuned so that it works immediately "out of the box". So for example PCLOS comes with Nvidia drivers already installed, and with Java installed. Also all sources of online updates are predefined, so all the user has to do is click a few times, and their system is updated. All of these things are absent in a standard Mandrake installation. I understand MandrakeSoft's point of view about issues like the Nvidia drivers. They maintain that they cannot distribute packages which are not licensed under a GPL compatible license, and so those components are not present in the distro. But the time when a Linux newbie needs the most help is when they first start to use Linux, and by including the non-free components PCLOS has created a distro the first time Linux user can really enjoy.

Texstar has used his knowledge of the best desktop Linux applications to provide a Linux desktop which is not cluttered by having too many choices which will only confuse a new user. The choices he has made of packages to include in PCLOS are thoughtful, and will please many users. If however a user should prefer some other applications, then they can be easily downloaded and installed because PCLOS is based on Mandrake RPM packages which are compatible with PCLOS.

For package management PCLOS uses the Synaptic package management GUI developed by Connectiva Linux in preference to the Mandrake rpmdrake. Synaptic has in my opinion a much better defined GUI than the Mandrake tool, but it is not any better at resolving dependencies than rpmdrake. The fact that PCLOS comes with the online software sources for Synaptic pre defined, makes it a snip to use.

Conclusion

In my opinion PCLOS is a terrific desktop system especially for a new Linux user, and I always make a point of handing PCLOS CDs out to people I meet. I keep a copy on my own desktop machine, but mostly I still use Mandrake. Why? well PCLOS mostly IS Mandrake. The packages are (tweaked) Mandrake packages, the chief difference is the live CD function, and Texstar's tuning of the system to set it up as he likes it. My system is already installed and tuned the way I like it, so there is little incentive to switch.

Thursday 8th July 2004