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!!