[Leaplist] pclinuxos - pleasant experience

[Dan Cherry]

Hi,
thought I'd share a _very_ pleasant installation experience with the new 
test release of pclinuxos.  For starters, after booting the liveCD, the 
install took less than 10 min. to get to the copy phase, and only 10 
more minutes until it asked for a reboot!  Most of the first 10 minutes 
was planning and setting the partitions.  Unless you're very new to 
partitions, I'd suggest using custom partitions (one of the options) to 
be sure you see what will be done.  (I was replacing an existing Ubuntu 
system, so I didn't have to ponder any of the questions very long - I 
was already familiar with what I wanted).

_ALL_ of my hardware was detected (HP laptop - ze4400), including a 
NetGear WG511 wireless pcmcia card, using the prism54 chipset.  The 
winmodem was identified, but I didn't try to use it, so I've no idea if 
it configured properly.

There's an excellent configuration application (Control Center).  Nice 
approach for both newbies and those already familiar with Linux - you 
start your choices in English (that is, human terms), and as you make 
choices, you're given more technical options.  As an example, I chose 
hardware - then 'set up the printers, and the print job queues...', and 
was given a choice to turn on the cups service (explaining that it was 
originally disabled until it was needed, for maximum security). 
clicking the tab for 'configured on other computers' gave me a list of 
all the printers on my network after about 10 seconds.  I was done.

In the same control center, I chose 'mount points', and was give a 
choice of several different types of connections (nfs, samba, webdav, 
harddrives, cd drives).  I chose nfs, and was asked if I should install 
the nfs-client software!  How nice not to fumble around with "what do I 
need?" before "How do I do this?".  Click install, and a few seconds 
later I get a screen offering to search the network for nfs shares.  A 
few seconds later, I could assign them to mount points, and use them. 
Very nice approach.  (afterwards, I used apt-get to install autofs, but 
that's a linux choice, at least the control center got me connected to 
the nfs shares with absolutely no knowledge of what I needed or how to 
do it).

Several apps which were partially disabled in Ubuntu for security (and I 
had to figure out why they didn't work as expected!), were either fully 
functional, or one click away from being re-enabled in the case of some 
of the services (again thru the control center).

Some things I prefer are not in the current repositories (2007) yet, but 
I don't consider that to be a show stopper.  I understand pkgs are still 
being added daily.  The 2007 versions are built with a newer compiler 
version, so the new RPMs are not necessarily compatible with earlier 
versions.  This may be why performance is so good.

BTW, performance is interesting.  I have been using IceWM under Ubuntu 
and Debian to keep things moving crisply.  IceWM under PCLinuxOS is even 
faster, and when I tried KDE, it was nearly as fast as IceWM on 
Ubuntu!!!  I may stay with KDE, unless bigger apps bog it down later - 
too early to tell yet.  But IceWM worked beautifully and was well 
configured right out of the can;-)

This is still a test release, so I expect more will be hitting the 
repositories over the next few weeks.  The apps I didn't find, would be 
easy enough to install via tarball if necessary, but plenty of choices 
were available.

If you're still with me, one last observation that I found very 
heartening.  I use shared address books and calendars with thunderbird 
and sunbird.  None of this worked properly with Ubuntu pkgs(yeah, yeah, 
disabled for security).  Pulling tarballs from Mozilla still required a 
LOT of tweaking under Ubuntu to get them to work.  With PCLinuxOS, the 
pkgs obtained with apt-get simply 'worked' when I added the 
extensions;-)  What took me 2 days to get working under Ubuntu took 5 
minutes with PCLinuxOS.

I'm sure I'll eventually get in over my head or wish I knew more about 
the 'Mandriva' way things are done.  but so far the entire install 
process has been clean, clear and productive.  Nice for a change.

also, thanks for the earlier advice and encouragement, Chris.  I'm glad 
I gave this a shot!

Dan

ps/ Although webdav connections work, the davfs2 pkg is not in the 
repository yet, so I'd say that was my first obstacle - again, not a 
show stopper, since I can ssh into the webdav server.