My Linux Experience
It only took fifteen minutes to decide that PClinuxOS was the system that I wanted on my computer. I was really surprised how easy it was in twenty minutes I had an awesome distro running.
Hello, everyone. My name is Danielle N. Pruey (Dani) and I am 12 years old. My grandfather (Papa), has asked me to tell about my experiences using Linux. Let me start by saying that he has always told me that I could hose a Windows computer faster than anyone he has ever known. I am sure that this fact helped drive him to find something that I can't hose in a matter of days. Being the youngest person in the house has always left me with the oldest and slowest computer.
The first version of Linux I used was one called Puppy. I liked Puppy because it was very fast and the theme was cute. My only problem with Puppy was that it did not have some apps that I now use on a daily basis like Limewire (I now use Frostwire), games, a music manager (Rhythmbox, Kaffiene, etc.), and Firefox did not seem the same as on the other computers in the house.
So this caused my Papa to install several distros, one after another, always looking for one that would make me happy: DSL, Goodgoat, Beatrix, Slax, VLOS, Vector, and several others that I cannot remember now. There was something I liked about every one of them but there was always something that was not quite right, or I would manage to get things so messed up that even Papa could not fix it.
Then, after about three months of this, he upgraded my computer so that he could install Simply Mepis. This was a very nice distro, and it had everything that I liked. I really liked the KDE desktop. I love to change the way things look and this desktop let me do just about anything I wanted.
While using Simply Mepis I tried many different apps. Papa always says "It's all about choice," so he showed me how to use kpackage to find new apps and to remove the ones I did not like. I finally ended up using Firefox, Thunderbird, Rhythmbox, Limewire, Open Office (for school), and Gaim for chatting. I really like the way Gaim puts my AIM, Yahoo, etc., all into one screen. I also enjoy the games, most of all khearts, ksnakerace and kmines.
We all used Simply Mepis for about a year and then Papa asked if I would like to try a different distro. This was my first time using a LiveCD and I think it is a great idea. I tried PCLinuxOS .92 and really liked it. It still had KDE but it seemed faster and everything seemed easier and to make more sense (at least to me). I liked the default blue and everything I was used to was already there except Open Office which was just a couple of clicks away. This is also where I switched from using kpackage to Synaptic. It only took about 15 minutes to decide that PCLinuxOS was what I wanted on my computer. Papa said, good, now you can install it, and he then walked me through installing it.
If was very surprised at how easy it was. It took about 20 minutes, and I had an awesome new distro to use. I think PCLinuxOS is the easiest OS that I have ever used. I recently upgraded to .93 and was again surprised by how much faster it was than .92. Having used PCLinuxOS for several months now I have changed several of the apps I use on a regular day. Instead of Firefox I use Flock. Amarok has replaced Rhythmbox and Kopete has replaced Gaim. All of my friends who come over use my computer and they want to know what kind of Windows I use and I just smile and say, I don't, I use: