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Monday, 04 June 2007

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Last Updated ( Thursday, 08 November 2007 )

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Featured Review

PCLinuxOS2007

Category: Operating Systems

Item Summary
PClinuxOS has been a long standing Linux distro, and has matured into one of the most user friendly, reliable and full-featured distros there is. It's well supported and comes with some good software, with a great selection of extra software available for quick download via the package manager. Installation is fast and easy and you can try-before-you-install by means of a LiveCD. CD burning, video and DVD playback are all included and work as well as you'd hope. Everything, especially the visual appearance, is easily customised and even the defaults are very pleasant looking and text very readable.

Good Points
Graphically astonishing, Beryl works extremely well giving 3D desktop effects, wobbly windows, menus drawn in fire, proper transparency...puts Windows Vista well in its place! The range of applications available is very good, software easy to manage by means of Synaptic package manager. Music and video playback tools are included and work well, with plenty of alternatives such as an official Realplayer. Wireless networking works fine with my Zyxel USB adapter, and with ndiswrapper it can use Windows drivers for wireless adapters. Video editing tools are, once tweaked, easier to use than some expensive Windows tools. TV tuner cards are supported as a part of the operating system, although I never got to try this out.
PCLOS2007 is friendly and easy to use. It talks to my Windows network better than the Windows boxes do, and it prints to my windows-shared printers with no hassle.
Firefox and Thunderbird come preinstalled, making web browsing a familiar experience.

Bad Points
You'll need some background knowledge and be prepared to hunt down information if your hardware doesn't work immediately. It's a steep learning curve but you will learn loads about how modern PCs really work.
Getting Wireless working especially can be a hassle. As you might expect with a free OS and free software, not everything works perfectly and graphics distortion seems to affect the window effects engine.

General Comments
I've been using PCLOS for 3 weeks, and have removed all trace of Windows from my system...this does everything I want and does it extremely well. Even my webcam works, as does Skype. The 3D rotate cube, allowing you to preview your 4 desktops (in case you run out of space) is a joy to behold. For those who have never experienced using a Linux distro before, THIS is the place to start. I don't just like using PCLinuxOS, I absolutely love it.

Recommended?
Yes