Tips from a PCLinuxOS User on Buying a PC and Choosing an OS

PC has now become a necessity, be it a desktop or laptop. It's the next big thing in everyone's gadget wish list after mobile phones. But choosing a make/model of PC and choosing an OS for it is quite different from that of a mobile phone. Very often home users are duped into buying the latest and most powerful piece of desktop/laptop though they never utilize the full power of their desktop/laptop hardware and the software that comes preinstalled.

Choosing OS for Home Users

Most of the power desktops/laptops come with Vista preinstalled. But is it worthwhile for the extra money you pay for it? Even some windows lunatics say MS took more than 5 years to downgrade the good old XP. Well, if you will choose other OS than that of the preinstalled Vista, you will need to gather drivers and other productivity software. So, it's wise to run a Linux flavour such as PCLinuxOS 2008, Mandriva 2008, Mepis 7.0 or Linux Mint 4 Daryana (these are the latest as of Feb. 2008).

Always choose the latest desktop oriented linux (or pclinuxos without any second thought) flavour for home computing. Ensure the Linux desktop you are going to use is newer than that of your hardware. And always choose Intel hardware (it has better drivers support in linux world). You won't have configure your devices and/or look for drivers. Just pop in the disk and you will get a working desktop/laptop within a few minutes.

If your hardware is very old use an old distribution or the one with generic kernel. But ensure the distribution you are using should be newer than the hardware.

What's more a desktop linux such as pclinuxos will provide you with just enough software for your home computing requirement. You will get a cutting edge office suite (openoffice), image manipulation program (gimp), a truck load of instant messengers, p2p clients, browsers, multimedia players, and all that. Even you won't need to install a single program. However, if you need more, than the repository is just a click away.

Choosing Laptop/Desktop for Home Users

Go to a PC retailer, ask her about the desktops and laptops. She will most definitely lead you to the selves having PCs with specs such as Intel Core2Duo, Dual Core, Centrino, ATI or Nvidia Graphics, and heavy RAMs exceeding 1GB. Probably she will tell you to buy the latest HP, Thinkpad or Vaio, or even more, a powerbook. Many customers go by it and bring home a power performer.

My friend, Satya, an HR manager, asked me to about buying a laptop. His requirements included word processing, spreadsheet generation, web surfing and watching movies. He is not a gamer. Last night he brought home a HP DV series laptop (specs: 1 GB RAM, Intel Core2Duo and NVidia Graphics with 256 display memory). I tried it. It was very fast and responsive. It is very good box for avid gamers and developers. It costs around Rs. 60,000.

Then we compared his HP DV laptop with my bare basic Compaq laptop (specs: 512MB RAM, Celeron M 530 1.73GHz, Intel 965GMA graphics, it costs only Rs. 25,000). Our comparison involved jobs such as: word processing, image editing, watching VCD, DVD and some Xvids, and ripping DVD, on PCLinuxOS Gnome Remaster and Vista Basic.

To our surprise, that costly HP laptop performed better while ripping a DVD, else the performance difference in other jobs was zero, we could not notice any difference.

So, what's the point buying that power machine paying almost twice the price than that of a model that just meets your requirement impeccably?

Anybody who is looking for buying a laptop/desktop for home use please don't be fooled at the latest Intel processors, costly graphics cards, high capacity hard drives and that pre-installed Vista OS. No need to pay almost twice the price of a base model.

Ideal hardware specs for home computing

Processor: Celeron M 530 or above (cheap yet great performance)
Memory: 512MB (enough you will never need more)
Graphics: Onboard Intel Graphics (don't go for those Nvidia or ATI if you are not a gamer)
Hard drive: 80 GB (why more than this, buy some DVDs instead and store those heavy files)

PCLinuxOS Gnome 2008 - Linstized screenshots

I was looking for PCLinuxOS flavours with latest xorg and kernel. PCLinuxOS official version is yet to be released. And it may be May till the final reaches mirrors. So I thought why not try its gnome remaster. It's the same pclinuxos with gnome desktop. To the gnome remaster I added crossover linux and installed photoshop (my fav image editing software) and ms office (my favourite office suite, though I love Linux I don't like openoffice or gnome office). Also I searched a while for themes in gnome-look.org. And here is the result of what I got. Even vista people will envy this eye-candy pclinuxos.

Click on the images to see the actual sizes



PCLinuxOS Gnome screenshot showing nerolinux, ms office apps and photoshop icons. Also the theme manager showing the default themes + customized linsta theme. I also changed the gnome main menu with vista icon. Some where I have renamed native linux icons. So that many windows users will feel at home.



Nerolinux on top of crossover linux on my pclinuxos gnome desktop.



MS Office on top of crossover linux on my pclinuxos gnome desktop.



rxvt on my pclinuxos gnome remaster.



Epiphany on my pclinuxos gnome remaster.



My PCLinuxOS gnome desktop with the launch icons of the apps that I use.

Linux woes told through PCLinuxOS - as my friend tells it

My friend Sudhanshu wants to share few words with Linux community. He was a Windows user now turned to a full-time Linux user only last week. He asked me several good things and bad things of linux, I told him to recollect all his thought and put into paper. Here is what he says. I thought it would be better to put the ideas on this blog. Because PCLinuxOS is the best usable and easiest desktop in the Linux world. At least I think so.

Hope, the members will address some of the issues raised by my friend. So that he (and many others) will know why Linux is so if it is so.

Here goes my friend Sudhanshu......

"I just want to share some of linux ecstacy and agony with you.
Linux is a great server. In my office we never had any problem running web servers on Mandriva, RHEL or Debian. But I wonder why Linux Desktop is still rough around the corners. Let me site some examples (all from my experience).

1. I am never sure whether I can copy the next VCD on my Linux Desktop.
   The first time I tried to copy the vcd files I miserably failed. Then somebody suggested me to use vcdimager and/or vcdgear. Tried that. Some of the vcds got copied, some still could not (but i tried them on XP, all get copied like breeze). Then somebody else told me to use cdfs. I did that as well. And it was a tedious job building a kernel module (dkms-cdfs). It did better job then vcdimager and vcdgear. But still I find problem.
2. Next is the issue with drivers. PCLinuxOS 2007 did not have drivers for my x3100 graphics card. Somebody told me to download the latest xorg-video-intel driver. Downloaded it, but it could not go. It asked for a later xorg-server. Upgraded it. Still could not succeed. Of course, PCLinuxOS Gnome Remaster 2008 install detected my driver and autoconfigured. But, again a big but, I get only 24bit color at the best, whereas on windows I could get 32bit color. It's not a big issue, but nontheless a concern.
3. I always loved my system clean. That's why I used many disk-cleaning tools on windows partition. But while using kleansweep on PCLinuxOS, I got dire results. I could not got my desktop back. I had to do a fresh install. Later I came to know that kleansweep is quite unintelligent while choosing what keep and what to dump. But I never had such a problem before.
4. Then big issue was with getting proper software. Take for example K3b. It's versatile. But again not like that of Nero (I am talking about the Windows version, NeroLinux lags behind K3b). Whenever I write CD/DVD on Nero, I am sure it will burn well. But in K3b I have to be cautious about the burning speed, else the media is gone.
5. The same thing goes with other softwares like Deluge and Ktorrent. None of them are as good as utorrent or bitcomet... On other front such as Office suites and graphics, linux apps are not that much productive. Let me explain, I never found OpenOffice as responsive (and fast) as MS Office. I never find GIMP as usable and versatile as Photoshop. Coming to illustration software, inkscape, xara and sodipodi lag miles behind CorelDraw and Adobe illustrator. The same goes with video-editing and audio-editing apps.
6. Another big challenge. Last week I purchased disks of Britannica Encyclopedia and Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. I refer to both of them at home and office. Both of them have option to speak/pronounce text and both come with Linux and Windows versons in a pack. In windows I never had any problem. OALD took MS speech engine and Britannica took quicktime. But while trying them on PCLinuxOS the speech engines did not work. Britannica and OLAD both asked to install VLC (despite the fact that the system already had the latest versions of VLC) then it told to use the VLC binary that came with the Britannica and OLAD. Did that as well. But still no going....
7. Coming to web browsing. Previously, I had 64kbp bandwidth. I upgraded it to 128 last month (64kbp sucks). In windows I have always found it a bad experience to browse, but accessing the web was never a challenge. While in PCLinuxOS I could not access some of the websites. Firefox would fire some rounds of search and then it will say "The server is redirecting the page in such a way that would never....." and stand still... Later after a full days toil, I came to know it was an ipv6 issue. I disabled ipv6 globally. Now I enjoy browsing on firefox the best. Well, let me explain one more thing... Firefox is great in many respects, but it has one drawback, it's still very slow to start, whereas IE4, 5, 6 and 7 all are very fast to start, though they fall flat before FF feature-wise.
8. I visit distrowatch regularly. Love to read the software and new-releases. I am very annoyed, when will the bugs will ever go. Every new release note tells it fixed certain bugs, but still there are many to be fixed on the next release. The n-number of alphas, betas and rcs...
9. Then coming to desktop environment. Windows Desktop Environment (Explorer) and Mac Environment (Aqua) rarely break/crash. (I am talking about desktop environment and not the system or OS). But I have crashed KDE and GNOME several times. You tinker a little and will be dragged to a text terminal. At some good times you can come back to desktop
   and at some bad times you have to re-install or re-configure the desktop...
10. The integration puzzle: On windows I never have problems in adding/removing/changing programs. My MS Office default install had Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, and many others, but I removed everything except Word, Excel and Powerpoing. But while trying the same with OpenOffice on PCLinuxOS, synaptic says it's going to remove the whole of OO.o. And the same thing goes with others. I know I have x3100 video driver installed. But on synaptic I see many others video drivers (and tons of other drivers). While trying to uninstall them, it says it's going to remove the x3100 driver as well. What a mess! The same is true with removing quite a lot of other software. When I try to remove some of unnecessary software, synaptic says it's going to remove some necessary software as well. Oh!!
    

Last words...

Despite all those things I use Linux. I am proud of its growth. It's improving like anything. Only last sunday, I deleted my windows partition and did a fresh install of PCLinuxOS. Because I love FOSS, GNU and Linux. I like their philosophy of software development and deployment. And I like the linux security. But as I told earlier, I just pray god and the developers to smooth the rough edges of Linux. Hope the situation will improve in next few years.

Thanks all the forum members."

PCLinuxOS 2008 - a mini survey

I have been using PCLinuxOS for last 3 years though every now and then I switch to different distros, always I keep coming back to the comfort of PCLinuxOs. I love PCLinuxOS for some reasons and I hate it for some other. However, a copy of PCLOS remains with me wherever I go.

I am sure it gives the best desktop experience of Linux than any other distro, but still some people prefer another to it. Why??? For this I had polled a mini survey on this blog, which addressed to this issue and some others as well. Here are the results:

What makes PCLinuxOS the best? Stability, Beauty or Performance?

My visitors liked PCLinuxOS best for its stability. No doubt it's beautiful and a good performer. But the beauty and performance is delivered from other desktop distros also.

Which is the best desktop Linux? PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, Fedora or Blag? I have removed Ubuntu from the list, because it is very much cliched.

I posted above poll just to compare PCLinuxOS with Fedora/Redhat. Sometimes I feel sorry about Fedora. It has never been ready for desktop. In desktop arena, PCLinuxOS beats Redhat/Fedora all the way.

What is your preferred desktop environment? KDE, Gnome, Xfce or IceWM?

Poll result shows KDE is still the winner, but Gnome is rising on the scene at an alarming speed, may be it will outdo KDE very soon. It's good that PCLinuxOS also has a Gnome remaster ready for avid gnome lovers. Visit http://linuxgator.org for more...

Why Linux is still not the preferred desktop? Are people not aware of the latest improvements in Desktop Linux Distributions? Is Linux Desktop environment not as tightly integrated with the system as that of Mac OS (OS X) or Windows XP? Do so many Linux distributions dilute the focus of interested users? Is Linux not as usable as Windows or Mac OS (OS X)?

The above poll topic attracted very few responders, but pathetically responders proved it that Linux is still rough around the corner, still lacks the polish of Mac or Win. It's really pity that Linux being free and versatile sits on 2% of the desktop/laptop! Good heavens, distros like PCLinuxOS, Mepis and Mint are working hard to give Linux its long deserving polishness.

PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe Rocks

The wait seems worth it after having face to face with PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe. I have a special interest in this edition, because it was downloaded on my machine coinciding with the birth of my first child - Piyush. Both have unlimited possibilities, but the possibilities of MiniMe is pronounced at its release whereas my son has to prove it at sometime in future....



PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe was released on 7th Jan 2008. It is a minimalist live CD with KDE. It comes with 2.6.22.15 kernel and xorg-server 1.3. It is a minimal live CD that is bootable and installable. To it you can add your own background, window decoration, localizations, preferred applications and supporting libraries, to power up your desktop.

Tex and the Ripper gang have always gifted us with a better PCLinuxOS in every release, this MiniMe is no exception. But what I liked the most in it is its swiftness and look. The default window decoration Linsta Squared simply rocks.

The most noteworthy point in the release of MiniMe is that - PCLinuxOS regular release is just around the corner. I hope to see more in that as well.

Tex, you have done a great job.
Download : http://spout.ussg.indiana.edu/linux/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/live-cd/english/preview/pclinuxos-minime-2008.iso

PCLinuxOS Business Edition Linux or simpley BEL

PCLinuxOS has risen up in popularity like no other distro. And alongwith it there came several community projects like: SAM, PClinuxOS Gnome, TinyME and PCFluxboxOS. However, the news is that it has a Business Edition also, PCLinuxOS Business Edition Linux or simply BEL.



PCLOS BEL is a business implementation of PCLinuxOS 2007. It caters to the needs of small and medium businesses. It is one of the easiest to use Linux Distributions available to them.

BEL comes out in multiple version such as - Terminal, Workstation, Server and SOHO.

I installed its Workstation edition my Compaq C702TU notebook. It is very much responsive. I would say it a blazing distro, though not cutting edge. The only problem I faced was configuring the x3100 graphics card, like PCLinuxOS 2007 it does not support the graphics card. Well, that's not an issue with business deployment.

As the BEL people say, it brings the full power of GNU/Linux to help your office computer make you more productive, and offer cost effective, resource light solutions that make your office tasks more efficient and easy to use. My opinion is if you are purchasing SLED or RHELD, you should try PCLOSBE. Who knows, it will prove just right for your business. And you won't have to spend a penny.

Visit BEL website for more.

PCLinuxOS 2007.1 or PCLinuxOS 2008 - Which? When??

I have always appreciated the rather delayed PCLinuxOS. Because I am sure Tex and the Ripper Gang bring out wonder releases everytime. So, the wait is worth. This is first time I have become impatient and pleaded the PCLinuxOS people - "please bring out an updated pclinuxos iso, if not a new release."

Definitely, not for me! I got mine working with Granular, PCLinuxOS Gnome Remaster plus hours of hooking to the forums. The reason was just to get my new laptop hardware work on PCLOS. Though I have tested it on Mandriva 2008 and Ubuntu Gutsy, and it worked fine, I just can't help keep me away from PCLinuxOS. Now I am working on Granular. I updated intel driver, xorg and kernel in Granular matching with that of PCLinuxOS Gnome Remaster (it is the latest of all the pclos clan). Wait... wait... i also had do some manual editing to get my pclos laptop work well. So, how a noob is going to do all these....? Besides the repo has been greatly changed. It sounds a new installation is better than a complete update.

I agree, PCLinuxOS 2007 is the most stable, radically simple and it just works. But dear, there has been much change in desktop and laptop hardware since kernel 2.6.18 and xorg 1.1.

While somebody put a query in pclinuxos forum about - the next release, updated iso, etc. There is but one reply - "It will be ready when it is ready." Oh my God! It sounds philosophy.

We all know, Tex and the Gang go out of the way to give us a great distro each time. But if they take a little pain and give a rough date of next release or next updated iso, it will give complete peace of mind to many restless pclinuxos fans. The release date can be a approximate, 1 month back or forth does not matter much. But it will definitely give much solace.

Tex, it's not a complain, but a plea.

Edulos - Education the PCLinuxOS way

Hi,
All you governments, educators, parents and students, PCLinuxOS is coming you way to make learning fun and effective. The Edulos is cooking! Edulos, a PCLinuxOS remaster is about to hit the Linux World soon. It is designed to provide plenty of software to help you in learning, training and teaching. This includes creating easy to read and understand How-Tos and tutorials to enable the user to use the software that we provide, as we see ICT as enabling one to learn, not only as a separate subject to be learned.

The target of Edulos is:

* primary school users
* secondary school users
* educators and parents

Edulos will have packages to facilitate learning as well as teaching. This means packages for languages, arts, maths, science, sports, ICT, lessonplans, timetabling, grading and even educational games.

There have been many education-oriented small Linux distros like Edubuntu. But most them don't go beyond gcompris, childsplay and kde-edu, but not any more. Edulos is going to be "complete education on Linux platform."

It will:
* make the teachers' job easier
* give more involvement like showing children the beauty and complexity of molecules or DNA in 3D
* help the dance teacher in working on choreography
* help a person to create timetable without pen and paper
* make the auxiliary things such as lesson plans, worksheets, correcting homework, developing tests and writing reports, a lot easier and fast.
* have a lot of fun stuff and games.

What should I say? If it's on PCLinuxOS, it should rock!

Yet another PCLinuxOS Remaster - Ultumix

Thanks to the fan-following (not fan-boyism), here comes Ultumix, yet another PCLinuxOS Remaster. It prides to be the easiest PCLinuxOS ever for being "The OS designed for Windows users by previous Windows Users."

Its final pre-release is available for testing.

download link torrent: http://www.mindblowingidea.com/Ultumix2008v0-0-1-0RC2.torrent
download link ftp: http://www.mindblowingidea.com/Ultumix2008PreRelease/Ultumix2008Pre_v0.0.1.0.iso

So, what is this Ultumix?

1. It includes more non-free packages than PCLinuxOS.
2. It includes more applications (financial programs, games, emulators, documentations + a bible) in general and comes as DVD image somewhat comparable to Granular Linux.
3. The look is customized to give a windows feel.

Ultumix has a forum - http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=200997 to support new users.

I found the windows affinity of Ultumix is more than any of the PCLinuxOS Remasters released so far.

Let's hope for more localized PCLinuxOS remasters in future.

Working with .docx files in PCLinuxOS

There has been much hoopla over the so called new standard of Microsoft Word - .docx file format, introduced in Microsoft Office 2007. I don’t assume it as a better format to .odt, the native format of OpenOffice.org. But sometimes we need to work on those files. May be your boss mailed you a text document in .docx format or may be you worked on Microsoft Word in your office and took home to work on it later on PCLinuxOS.

Before, going ahead with the solution, let me remind you that: you can "Save As" your .docx file as .doc in Microsoft Office 2007. This option is there.

However, if you want to take a little challenge, here is how to fix OpenOffice.org to open and edit .docx files.

1. Update your OpenOffice.org.
2. Download odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm
3. Install file-roller.
4. Open the odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm using file-roller.
5. Extract /usr/lib/ooo-2.0 from inside the rpm to your desktop.

• Now in "ooo-2.0" folder you have a program at /ooo-2.0/program, named "OdfConverter". Go to konsole, as root, and issue: cp /home/YourUsername/Desktop/ooo-2.0/program/OdfConverter /usr/lib/ooo-2.3/program
  
  
• Then, there is a file named "MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu" located in /ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter. Once again as root issue: cp /home/YourUsername/Desktop/ooo-2.0/share/registry/ modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/ MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu /usr/lib/ooo-2.3/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter
  
  
• The third file is "MOOXTypeDetection.xcu" and is located in /ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types. As root issue: cp /home/YourUsername/Desktop/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/ MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/ooo-2.3/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types

You are done! Now reboot the system and try working on your .docx files on top of OpenOffice.org in PCLinuxOS. Eureka!!