PCLinuxOS 2009 Goes Gold 90
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."
Moore's law and Gentoo (Score:3, Interesting)
I first tried Gentoo on an AMD K62 with 96 MB RAM. Back then, a usable system took at least a week if there were no compiler errors. Which there were, I never got it working because I gave up after the first week or so.
But now, Moore's law has largely mitigated this nightmare - you can have a working system in a few hours! Of course, the faster systems also obviate a primary need for Gentoo (performance) but...
I'm sticking with Fedora, thanks!
Re:Fast download (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to agree I just can't get away from it. The initial build is incredibly painful, doubly so atm because upgrading the default GCC in 2008.1 (4.1.2) to 4.3.3 so you can set your march to core2!
I realise this makes me sound like your typical ricer, but make no mistake I *know* it aint gonna be (noticably) faster, but as parent said - its knowing that its right is what counts. If you can maximise how well your OS is tailored to your box, and minimise cruft it makes it far easier to figure out problems (imho). I certainly give credit wher it is due to distro's like ubuntu That also offer things like kde 4.2 I just feel that if something goes wrong - what then? The boards for ubuntu/gentoo are a world apart in my anecdotal experience. Understandably though. If you chose Ubuntu, its probably because you can't/won't understand whats going on behind the scenes.
Anyway I feel gentoo is a delight to work with. Portage is incredible, it gives you so much control of your build and yet its learning curve is not too steep.
I try not to promote gentoo by highlighting the problems with other distro's - I think it stand on its own merits. My personal experience with RPMs has been terrible, I like to hope that this is down to my failure to grok them, otherwise ther is a lot of pissed off people out there that don't know any better!
In fact I would go so far as to only recommend gentoo to people who I think will understand where it is coming from, and why it is like it is. Everyone else? might as well just get a mac ;)
Re:is used by 3.2 percent of DesktopLinux readers. (Score:1, Interesting)
(the Queen of England cant even make the list as the richest land owner in the UK)
Being pedantic, the Queen is the only land owner in the UK. When you buy a house here you don't buy the land, you buy the "freehold". This isn't just archaic legal mumbo jumbo. It reflects the fact that you don't own the land (the Queen does), just the right to live on it rent free.