PCLinuxOS 2K4: Mandrake Meets The Live CD

NoahsLinuxArk2K3 writes "For those of you who may not be familiar with PCLinuxOS, it's a Linux distro derived from Mandrake Linux 9.2, developed by none other than Texstar from PCLinuxOnline (best known for his RPM work for the same distro). The new distro is primarily a Live CD, but can also be installed to the hard drive. It is still in preview release, but at 306 hits per day, it's already #8 on the DistroWatch charts. This review is the first of its kind to surface and it is looking very promising." Update: 12/30 03:18 GMT by T : A semi-anonymous reader writes "For those who dont have a high speed connection, PCLinuxOS 2K4 Preview 4 is available from OSDisc.com for a few bucks." Probably soon it will be at cheapbytes, too.

Quite Amazing

[Rodrin]

It's very rare to have a new linux distrobution hit the top 10 on distrowatch ever. Count this distro in your books as a record breaker. But why does it have to be based on Mandrake? Boo-hoo. =)

Mandrake is great anyway, live CD is even better..

[Qweezle]

Mandrake has always been my favorite distro for it's useability, while still maintaining the features that a Linux guru(not myself) would love, it's truly a distro for everyone.

But a Live CD is just awesome, think of all the new users who can try Linux for the first time, not as Knoppix, which is translated from German, but Mandrake! What a great way to learn about and be introduced to Linux!

Re:Quite Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true. Unusual yes, not that rare though. Yoper was in the #1 spot less than two weeks after addition to Distrwatch and stayed there for a while. Knoppix skyrocketed and settled in a 3d, I don't remember how high it got though. Sorceror linux followed the same pattern. There are probably others but since Distrowatch is /. ed I can't look at the distro list to refresh my memory.

Re:Quite Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

i remember about a year or longer ago when Yoper came out it made #1 for a while and i could not see what all the fuss was about as it was just another dumbed down distro (bastard child of Debian only dumbed down)

now Yoper is barely keeping current

Re:God dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible to implement such filters but only is useful IF it counts as a down moderation when the post starts automatically at -1. The reason it's so important is after enough negative moderations, the IPs of the wankers are banned. It probably doesn't matter that much, though, since they have proxy lists.

There actually are lameness filters to prevent a lot of the ASCII art.

What's unfortunate, is more restrictions will probably be placed on posting which will likely prevent some legitimate posts from getting through.

Re:LiveCD installers

[bfree]

Taking Debian as an example, it may be worthwhile looking at having a liveCD net-installer image, so you can boot up into a full-system and choose to kick off a net install at any time. But on a regular installation cd, you do not want a liveCD, why? Well the point of having a cd is so you don't have to download so many packages (if any), and if you use up space on the cd with the liveCD then you will likely send more people hitting the mirrors.

I recently had to install a system as a basic desktop. I did both types of knoppix-installer runs (debian and knoppix) and either way I felt I had a slightly mish-mashed system which I didn't really want to keep working with. So I got the latest daily image of the net-inst cd for debian-installer, experienced one minor problem (had to hand prod the network up) and had a system up under my control in no time. The old debian installer is just that, old! The new debian installer is looking great [debian.org] (providing the ports can come together) and while it may still be in development, asking why liveCD when compared to the old installer is a waste of time. Why liveCD Vs the new installer ... well I think it's a matter of horses for courses. If you want a quick means to a certain setup, liveCDs should be great, but if you want to setup a system with what you want, it's probably never going to happen from a liveCD except where the liveCD is simply a glorified front-end to the regular installer and then your liveCD has the decreased space for packages that got me started!

Re:LiveCD installers

[AMystery]

Your point is valid but you miss the audience. As a computer expert you are probably comfortable with the simpler installers that just do what they need, install the OS. but for those who have just one computer and aren't really comfortable with it, having a nice friendly fully functional OS that lets them try things out, search for help online and generally be up and running in 30 seconds is a boon.

It takes me roughly 1 hour to install any OS, windows or linux. Since I just have the one system and its getting rather old, that is at minimum of one hour when I cannot be productive computer wise. If I use a LiveCD then as soon as the CD boots I can keep going while the system installs in the background.

Your point about space is good and I would like to see a LiveCD based Net install. That would work great for new computer users. The CD has the LiveCD image, whatever other files fit and it downloads anything else. However, the CD boots and runs and there is very little wasted space there. You copy the CD to the HDD and its good.

a LiveCD based install just seems like the future of computer installs. Friends of mine who install windows for a living often bemoan how the installer is silent, like it would be better to have some kind of background music while it runs. That's the kind of thing that non-geek people see as progress. Also it just makes me happier, less down time, more powerful visual interface.