PCLinuxOS 2009 Goes Gold

nerdyH writes "After nearly two years, the PCLinuxOS project has achieved a major new release, PCLinuxOS 2009. The project is notable for maintaining a Linux hardware compatibility database, publishing a freely downloadable monthly Linux magazine, and selling hardware pre-installed with Linux. It boasts a pretty vibrant community, too, and is used by 3.2 percent of DesktopLinux readers, according to an ongoing reader survey there."

Re:Fast download

[anagama]

Why should I download? I've checked out the main site, at least the top pages on the site, and it doesn't say why I should care about pclinux. Compare with Debian, Ubuntu, or Gentoo -- these suggest a reason for using any of those right off the bat. Fedora is a little more vague, but then Red Hat can be a little more coy than others.

This is the first thing said about PCLinuxOS [pclinuxos.com]:

The Ripper Gang is pleased to announce the final public ISO release of PCLinuxOS 2009.1. This release features kernel 2.6.26.8.tex3, KDE 3.5.10, Open Office 3.0, Firefox 3.0.7, Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, Ktorrent, Frostwire, Amarok, Flash, Java JRE, Compiz-Fusion 3D and much more. We decided to use kde3-5-10 as our default desktop as the we could not achieve a similar functionality from kde4. We will however offer kde4 as an alternative desktop environment available from the repo once we stabilize it.

That alphabet soup doesn't really inspire at all. Now, I actually know that I don't want to use Gentoo, but the first thing from the site makes it seem tempting [gentoo.org]:

We produce Gentoo Linux, a special flavor of Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience. To learn more, read our about page.

Re:Fast download

[aurispector]

Ok, so your criticism is that the website isn't shiny enough? God, I'd hate to be your waiter. If you haven't tried the distro itself, it's hard to give your attitude any credibility.

That being said, I spent part of yesterday playing around with the gnome version and came away extremely impressed. The 2007 version was very good, and these guys spent a lot of time ironing out bugs and making it simple to set up and use. Everything worked for me right out of the box, the package system is excellent and if you want to fiddle with settings there's an easy to navigate menu system. This is a great distro both for ease of use and for letting you look under the hood without first becoming a command line god.

Try it and you may end up wondering why people get so worked up about Ubuntu.