anyone given latest pclinuxOs a go?

[eggyeaster55]

Hi just noticed that this section has mostly ubuntu threads and i wondered if anyone else here has opinions on pclinos as we call it... i have a spare pc which i use to play a little with linux using hard drive caddy's i can switch between ubuntu and pclinos.. both seem to work quite well one gnome and one kde..being a linux newbie i have to say i prefer the kde system... time for some other opinions here other than ubuntu?

[Gina]

By all means Mark :):) I have spare disk space (particularly having just upgraded my old desktop with a 250GB HD :lol) I for one would be happy to see some info on this. I don't imagine there would be any problem adding other Linux distros to the multi-boot GRUB system.

A bit later... I Googled it and am interested in what I see - might download a LiveCD ISO and take a look (when I have some spare time :lol)

Meanwhile, tell us what you like about it, please :)

[eggyeaster55]

so far i have been pleased to find that it accepted the hardware without a hitch, and then i started to set up my peripherals..my epson680 was listed and worked straight away, same went for my camera a canon a85 in digikam,i even managed to get my relatively new phillips webcam spc900nc working with a software download in the repository, i like to listen to internet radio mostly 70's so i used a program called streamtuner , and suprising got my creative zen vision m working with a program called amorak, tho i did find another program called gnomad which i prefered for the zen,...i chat using aMsn or use kopete to use other chat systems.....my general feeling is that its a "fresh" version of linux especially having previous tried linspire which was "old" and not much in my hardware worked there,
I have ubuntu as well and have all the above things working there as well but i do prefer the layout of kde over gnome...not tried kubuntu..tho i might at a later stage.

[Gina]

Sounds good :)

[eggyeaster55]

given it a go yet gina?

[Gina]

No, not yet. Been busy with other things.

[Gina]

Googled it but can't find a download link :( Can you tell me where to download it from please?

[eggyeaster55]

try these.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_ionfiles&Itemid=28
i think i used the irish mirror

[Oldun]

Going to give it a whirl . Reading up on it first . It appears to be very comprehensive, Not that far removed from Windows .

[Gina]

Thanks Mark :) I'll download it tomorrow and give it a try :) I see it's based on KDE - been trying that in Ubuntu :lol

[eggyeaster55]

so how is your trial going? gina...oldun..

[Gina]

Having to sort out my partitions to make room for installing it.

[eggyeaster55]

gone a bit quiet? given up on it already?

[Gina]

Sorry, too busy with other things ATM - have it in mind to look at when I can - haven't forgotten :lol

[Oldun]

I had to abort the installation because their installer could not read my Hard disk and partitions .It only read an empty disc instead of seeing 3 installed partitions and 1 empty one .Still trying to solve that.had various answers the main one being it cannot read those formatted to Ext 3 .Which does not make sense .:confused:

[Phaedrus]

I`m sticking to Ubuntu.

Trev.

[Gina]

I had to abort the installation because their installer could not read my Hard disk and partitions .It only read an empty disc instead of seeing 3 installed partitions and 1 empty one .Still trying to solve that.had various answers the main one being it cannot read those formatted to Ext 3 .Which does not make sense .:confused:OOOOOHHH ERRR !!! I won't risk trying it on anything other than my old desktop then - nothing important on that. But if it won't recognise ext3 partitions it won't get anywhere as apart from the swap that's all there are!!

Must say though, like Trev, I'm very happy with Ubuntu! :)

[eggyeaster55]

to follow up on the above problems i went and asked what could be causing olduns problem here is what one guy responded with:-

hysteresis
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Re: attempted to get some people to try 2007
« Reply #3 on: Today at 05:31:02 AM »
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I once had a triple boot of ubuntu, PCLOS, and xp in which all of them were bootable, but my Gparted livecd could not see anything on the disk (it showed it as completly empty). I booted into XP and attempted to run partition magic, but it kept claiming that there was an error (something about partitions overlapping)and asked me if I wanted to fix it.It claimed to fix it and then gave me the same error. It never would start partition magic. I ended up wiping the drive and starting over. I have since installed pclos and ubuntu using this post:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=58&topic=27051.0 and my partitions show up on every linux and windows partition manager. I bet if your friend attempted to run a partition program in windows they would find that they had a problem.

i wonder if something similar happened......anyway you can always run pclinuxOs as live cd just to have a look.....
i then installed mine on a freshly formatted hard drive and then just clicked on yes thru the drak installer.

[Oldun]

eggyeaster55 I use Acronis Partition expert in Windows XP and it sees everything and no faults show up .I use the Acronis to format and label a partition as Ext3 but still no go . It is the actual Partitioner in PClinuxOS (Gparted I believe) that cannot read the drive properly .Have tried it Separately and with Ubuntu .
I have been thinking for some time about wiping the whole Hard drive clean .As Windows has been on there for some time , and there must be a fair bit of rubbish that the various cleaners and registry programs leave behind.

[Gina]

Strange - I would have thought the GParted in PCLINUXOS would have been the same (or much the same) as GParted as supplied with Ubuntu. I use GParted (Ununtu version and as supplied separately on the GParted ISO) all the time to create and modify my partitions and it always shows all the partitions and works a treat. Anyway, I'm downloading PCLINUXOS ISO now and will see :)

Must admit I find the Linux apps much easier to use and more stable than Windows software.

As for the new Vista... well... I've only seen a bit of it on a friend's PC and can't say I'm very impressed. Takes an even greater age to bootup and shutdown than XP! And it doesn't seem to like the Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox! I shall probably be seeing more of it at a later date, which will be interesting. I guess I shouldn't say too much after such a short play with it :lol

[eggyeaster55]

i can't say much about partitioning as i have done very little other than splitting a large hd in half in windows...i keep my main pc running on xp, my spare pc has the drive caddies allowing me to switch hard drives between pclinos and ubuntu depending what mood i'm in, should have bought more caddies though as i find it a good back up.

[Gina]

I don't bother with plugging and unplugging things much (except for USB memory sticks) I just partition my HDs into umpteen partitions :lol Well, nine on the second drive on this machine - used for various versions of Ubuntu and a couple of data partitions. The first drive holds the MBR and Windows partitions. Boot, backup and the Windows partition image for restoring to factory condition (should it be required).

My laptop has a restore partition, Windows XP and Ubuntu Feisty. Old desktop is all Ubuntu in various versions. It originally had Win 98SE :lol which I dumped. I also dumped the original 8GB HD and replaced it with a 250GB - now I have oodles of space :lol

Now writing PCLinuxOS to CD-R.

[Gina]

Seems to be a no-no on my main PC. Just tried the LiveCD and it won't load! :( Stops at a command line login - I tried various names and passwords but no joy. I'll see if it works on my other PCs....

[Gina]

Even worse on my older desktop PC! The kernel loads OK and I can run Memtest but the LiveCD option runs for a second or two and then the system reboots :(:(

Later... Just tried it on my laptop. It gets a lot further in LiveCD and goes through a series of options. However, when it gets to the net access setting up it crashes.

It is possible that the download was faulty or the either the writing or reading of the CD was faulty but I can't find any way of checking - I've looked on their website, examined the image for MD5 check file etc. (and the CD) but have found nothing. The main bulk of data is in one big file with an unknown extension and seems unable to be looked into by Ubuntu.

[eggyeaster55]

its strange that some can do everything out of the box so to speak and others can't, i had problems with burning a suitable disk, gave up and bought a copy cheaply,my next step was to format an old drive (i used drive manufacturers own formatter) then when i install 2007 it all went smoothly on all its own installer.
i looked in linux "charts" and pclinuxos is up there amoungst the top so it must work for some but i have seen posts in the forum re installer problems so perhaps there is work still to be done there.
The os seems very polished once you have it running that is lol

[Gina]

I might connect up my old 8GB hard drive and see if it will install on that with no other HDs installed to possibly get corrupted.

Of course, I realise this is a new project and only in Beta so don't expect it to be bug free. I guess the main effort has been put into the operation rather than installing alongside other OSs. At least Linux distros are small and fast and easy to install in general - and, of course, free to play with and use. It's so refreshing after many years of buying Windows software only to find it doesn't work or doesn't do what I want!

[Gina]

Well.... I Installed my old 8GB HD as first IDE master and tried running the CD. As before it got to the boot menu and I tried LiveCD - no joy. Tried a few other options - no joy. Media Test - no joy. Just rebooted after a couple of secs. Tried Memtest - that worked. There isn't an Install option from the boot meno :(

I've been reading up about PCLinuxOS and it looks promising - I really would like to see it. Unfortunately, it seems it won't work on any of my computers. There is just one possibility. I'm planning to buy a larger hard drive for my laptop and when I get that and put it in, I could try PCLinuxOS before restoring the partitions from my PartImage backups. At least it gets further on that machine than the others and may be persuaded to work if wired to the router.

[Gina]

After a fair bit of trying I managed to get PCLinuxOS LiveCD to run on my newer desktop which is wired to the router. Looks interesting - I like the new menu in KDE, though of course, you can set up KDE how you like but I thought it was a good thing for new users. I'm looking forward to installing it and having a proper play (on a pristine HD, when I get it).

Meanwhile, Ubuntu remains my OS of choice.

[eggyeaster55]

glad you have been finally able to at least take a look, i have been quite surprised that some people have been able to have it working successfully on recent machines even some relatively new laptops

[Oldun]

I have downloaded a free version of Paragon Partition Manager which is a Windows Program .This told me that I had a problem with my third partition and recommended that it was formatted. I am now in the process of backing everything up on all partitions before going ahead and wiping the third Partition .

[Gina]

Have a bit more to report, though so far it's rather negative. I've dug out an even older laptop than my six year old one. This has a 400MHz Celeron processor, 160MB RAM and 6GB HD. Running Win 98se. Found some old photos on it that I thought I'd lost so going to copy those off before wiping the HD.

Well... I've tried several Linux distros in Live CD form but can't actually get any to work. They seem to fail near the last stage on start-up leaving a partial desktop and pointer but nothing further happens and the previously movable pointer is frozen and CD stopped. ATM CD is about the only way of getting anything on - except for floppy! Nuff said! I'm hoping tp pick up a few bits tomorrow - wirleess adapter, USB2 HD cases for 2.5 and 3.5 HDs, maybe a bigger HD for my other laptop.

Currently the older laptop has no networking capability whatsoever. It has USB 1.1 but Win 98se won't work with USB memory sticks but it does have two 32 bit PCCard (PCMCIA) slots hence the wireless card. The optical drive is just a CD reader. However, once I get the 2.5 HD case I can copy stuff off on another PC and also install stuff onto it.

[eggyeaster55]

thats ok...i'm not friends with ubuntu...won't let me install driver for geforce2!!! was going to see if i could get those 3d effects certainly not as easy as pclinuxos to sort out.

[Gina]

Got some bits today - will be trying things out in the next few days :)

[eggyeaster55]

if you finally get it installed and have nvidia card try setting up the driver and 3 d effects it took me a complete novice just ten mins to get it sorted with a geforce 2. pclinuxos did most of it for me ..synaptic the drivers...loaded the dependencies told me what to do and when..hardest thing was at prompt typing startx got those nice 3 d effects wobbly windows etc

[eggyeaster55]

made good use of the lice cd over the weekend, a Dr. friends windoze pc crashed n burned and he was concerned he lost data he needed...pclos to the rescue booted live cd and then connected external hd and sent all his my docs folders across......
unfortunately his hd was fubar so i could not just do a simple recovery to factory default and had to fit a new hd and install there transferring all his data back

[Gina]

Copied all I wanted off the HD out of the old laptop and deleted the larger partition that contained data. Put HD back in laptop and although I hadn't touched the Win partition, it didn't boot. After several attempts with various Linux distros (including PCLinuxOS), I finally got Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) Live CD running and then installed on HD. That also fixed Windows :lol Still having probs with the Bellkin wifi card - tried setting it up in Win 98se and eventually got it working in that, so have proved it's not faulty.

[Gina]

Well... Been having another go with PCLinuxOS - yes, I'm VERY determined :lol Using one of the alternative options I've got the LiveCD almost working on my old laptop. Things seem to work but the desktop has no icons so no HD install option :( Trying to set up the wifi card, it can't find any device. Tried with both the PCMCIA card and a USB dongle - no joy with either. Ubuntu can't seem to find them either :(

Looks like PCLinuxOS could be very good - particularly for those that like KDE - but seems to want some more development to make it work on more PCs. Oh, and the LiveCD system doesn't recognise ext3 partitions. It sees the Windows (FAT32) partition but not the ext3 Linux partition. (Or the Linux swap) Perhaps I should wait for the next version to be released.

[Phaedrus]

Here`s a good PCLinuxOS install guide:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/install_pclinuxos.html

Also has guides to other distros (SUSE, (K)Ubuntu, Slackware and Mandriva).

Trev.

[Gina]

Bookmarked thanks Trev :):) I'll read it later - though I'm not all that hopeful of learning anything new - I've read all the docs. Once I've bought a new HD for my laptop I'll try installing on that - the Live CD runs fine but doesn't detect the partitions propelyy. It won't install on my old laptop or on either desktop.

I know why it won't work on my old laptop - it's only got 160MB of memory and PCLinuxOS needs 256. My other PCs ought to be OK though with 1GB (newer desktop) 512MB (newer laptop) and 256MB (old desktop). It's a pity about the old desktop as I can easily change HDs on that. I have a fair selection of 3.5" HDs to play with :lol