Review: PCLinuxOS 2007, GNOME and MiniMe

What version of Linux has been at the top of the Distrowatch rankings for months now that I’ve never tried until today? PCLinuxOS.

Everybody I know who has runs PCLinuxOS has good things to say about it. Scott Ruecker of LXer and the Los Angeles Daily News’ own City Hall reporter Rick Orlov are among those who have used and liked it.

I couldn’t boot the CD on my test machine (VIA C3-based converted thin client), but on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) it’s booting just fine.

To start with the live CD, I selected the “copy2ram” option because I have 1 GB to play with on this machine. It takes quite a while to copy the system files to RAM, but once that’s done, the system should run very fast.

The 2007 version of PCLinuxOS has received continual updates and is a sort of rolling release — the coders behind it don’t create new ISO images on a continual basis like we get from Ubuntu, for instance. Once you install PCLinuxOS, it’s easy to bring it up to day. Actually, I prefer it this way. I’d rather do a bunch of updates than continually burn new CDs.

Preview: I take the PCLinuxOS plunge

I don’t know what took me so long. After unseating Ubuntu from the No. 1 spot on Distrowatch months ago, PCLinuxOS has shown no signs of folding in the face of all things Feisty and Gutsy.

Even my co-workers (OK, co-worker, in this case the Los Angeles Daily News’ City Hall reporter Rick Orlov) are telling me how great PCLinuxOS is. Even Scott Ruecker, master of LXer, has sung its praises.

But I’ve been running Debian, Ubuntu, Puppy, Damn Small Linux, Slackware, Knoppix … everything but PCLinuxOS. OK, I tried it on my converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, but it wouldn’t boot.

But today I took the PCLinuxOS 2007 CD, burned CDs of the project’s GNOME and MiniMe images and started feeding them into the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450).

I’ll go into detail with a full review in the days ahead.

Cheap hardware loves Linux

I haven’t linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called “How low can you go and still run Linux?”

He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven’t tried in awhile …), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS “Mini-Me” spin.

He also talks up gOS, which is going from version 1 to 2. I booted into gOS today to see if Synaptic would magically do this upgrade for me. It did not. I got a couple dozen Ubuntu updates, but nothing indicating anything new or improved. And gOS is still as much of a dog as it ever was. On my hardware anyway, Ubuntu runs way better.

And I’m disappointed that Vaughn-Nichols didn’t mention Slackware derivatives Vector or Wolvix (the latter being my current favorite distro), or even Slackware itself. He could’ve also put in a word for Debian and even Ubuntu.

One thing I’ve learned is that whatever anybody says about how fast or slow a particular Linux distribution is, a little experimentation on your own hardware is in order before settling down with any one setup. I recommend creating a partition for /home, which you can keep intact (and backed up) while rolling different distributions in and out of there. That’s what I’m starting to do; my New Year’s resolution is “less dual- and triple-booting, more separate /home partitions.” See, I’m setting the New Year’s resolution bar very low — then I’ll be sure to succeed (unless I’m caught triple-booting anytime soon).

Anyway, I’m still using Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the Gateway Solo 1450. I’m packing the Lenny install with a whole lot of software, including lots of educational stuff for our 4-year-old.

I have Wolvix using a separate /home partition but not Debian. I might change that in the weeks ahead and see if they can share /home. I still can use Puppy 3.00 as a live CD — I have a pup_save on the Debian partition. For me, this is total, complete stability, the likes of which I haven’t seen in the past year.

I still have Debian Etch with Xfce on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, with Damn Small Linux 4.0 as a live CD. I’m thinking of trying Wolvix Cub on it, but with 64 MB of RAM, it could be a little dicey. What I need to do there is bump up the RAM to 144 MB (maximum of this circa 1999 laptop).

The PCLinuxOS computer — every damn thing you need for $150

I’m ready to throw down $150 for this deal (plus $15 to boost the memory to 512 MB). There are a smattering of low-cost Linux PC deals out there, but this is absolutely the best. Better than Everex, better than the used stuff at Pacific Geek. Better than Mad Tux. Hell, better than anything. You even get an LCD monitor. The $150 doesn’t include shipping, and I don’t know how much that runs. But holy hell, it’s cheap.

A site called linfx.com, which creates computer graphics for PCLinuxOS, among others, is behind the deal. They’ve also got a less-powerful box for $59 (no monitor, keyboard or other extraneous items).

Here are the specs for the $150 deal:

Refurbished IBM Net Vista Desktop with PCLinuxOS 2007 installed. Intel PIII 900mHz, Intel chipset with onboard graphics and LAN. Also includes 256mb ram, 20GB IDE HDD, 40x CDROM, 15″ TFT LCD (see specs. below), keyboard, mouse and a fresh PCLinuxOS 2007 LiveCD.

And here are the details on the monitor:

15″ IBM LCD Specifications T541
Size 15 Inch
15″ Viewable Screen Size
Resolution Max: 1024 x 768 @ 70 Hz
Recommended: 1024 x 768 @ 70 Hz
LCD Panel TFT Active Matrix LCD
Misc. Features ~ Viewing Angle: Horizontal 150°, Vertical 120°
~ Horizontal Freq. 30-61 KHz Vertical Freq. 56-75 Hz
~ Brightness 250 cdm-² (typical)
~ Contrast 350:1 (typical)
~ Hybrid System Attach Offers Maximum Attachment Flexibility and Positions Customer for the Future
~ Lift/Tilt/Swivel Stand Offers Optimum Adjustment for Viewing Comfort
Dimensions Unit: 13.6″ x 14.4″ x 8″
As Shipped: Unknown
Weight Unit: 10.5 Lbs

Here’s what you have to do:

To get yours just email Butch (bdrake@plasticrecovery.com )and request the PCLOS PC Deal, he will then email you a secure invoice.

And here are the specs on the $59 system:

NOW also available an IBM Desktop system including a Intel PIII 600mHz cpu, 384mb ram, Ati AGP graphics, integrated LAN and CDROM ONLY$59.00 This system is just the box, no monitor keyboard or mouse. Just ask Butch about the 59 dollar IBM system.

Pacific Geek also has deals like this on systems. … But the secret that’s not so secret is that old hardware is often free for those who ask and are willing to haul it away. That’s usually not true for laptops, but I did luck out on the $0 Laptop because it was five or six years old and not working, with a repair quote of $700. I did the repair myself, the quick and dirty way, for less than $3.

When it comes to desktop systems, you can often find them for free, but this $150 deal is pretty darn good, seeing as you get the keyboard, mouse, memory, CD drive and LCD monitor. It’s the monitor that makes me scratch my head — how can they do it? One thing you might need to add is a CD-R drive if you want to burn your own CDs … or you could go really crazy and shove a DVD-writer in there. Even I haven’t entered the era of burn-your-own DVDs, although the makers of many a Linux and BSD distro act as if we all have (offering DVD ISOs and no CD ISOs for those of us who don’t have the more sophisticated — and expensive — drives).

For comparison’s sake, here are some deals from Pacific Geek:

1.7GHz System 256MB 40GB CD USB /Firewire/ PCMCIA for $109.99

Compaq D51S Pentium 4 2.0GHz 512MB 40GB DVD XP SFF – B

Compaq iPAQ Desktop PC Computer 866 Mhz $59.99 (no CD drive)

So these PCLinuxOS deals are pretty great — if you can get them and get decent shipping. Read through the whole forum to see more info on the deal and what people think of it.

This week’s Distrowatch Weekly is PACKED with news

There are quite a few good Web sites for free-software users, but when it comes to sheer volume and organization, Distrowatch tops them all. I don’t know how Ladislav Bodner does it. He tracks many hundred Linux and BSD distributions, plus the applications that go into them. I hope he’s making a mint, because otherwise there’s little to no justice in the world.

Anyhow, the latest edition of Distrowatch Weekly is bigger than usual — there’s a lot going on in the Linux and BSD world.

I plan to blog individually about a half-dozen or more of Ladislav’s news items, but in the interest of remembering what they were, here’s what caught my eye:

Darkstar Linux is an easy-to-use variation on Slackware

PCLinuxOS releases a “MiniMe” live CD with minimalist KDE desktop

PCLinuxOS announces $150 computer with PCLinuxOS installed

A new distro, Damn Small BSD, promises a 50 MB live CD based on FreeBSD. Few other projects have me as excited as this one, especially now that so many other BSD distros are going DVD only.

There’s way more news than this. Keeping up with Distrowatch is one way to stay on top of it. (And don’t forget LXer, where links to everything open-source are updated many times a day.