Another couple of reasons to love PCLinuxOS

by David Stockle (pullapint)

I'm not new to PCLinuxOS, just "newish" to the forums. I've been using PCLinuxOS from .94 to 2009.2 and have loaded it on several laptops: Dell Latitudes, an Acer TravelMate and a couple of Gateways. I've also loaded it on a HP Pavilion, Gateway E4100 and a Dell Precision 360 all desktops. All have accepted PCLinuxOS without fault.

I recently had to upgrade my wireless card on my Dell laptop. Newegg had a pretty good deal on a Belkin N1 wireless card. While attempting to install it, I thought I had run into my first issue with PCLinuxOS. Even though Synaptic said the drivers were installed, I couldn't get it to work. So I tried ndiswrapper, put the cd in the drive, drilled down to the .inf and .sys file I wanted, and a couple of minutes later I was online.

Also for the last few months, I've been trying to turn a PC into a HTPC (Home Theater PC). My equipment is older, has no HDMI output, and my TV is a standard definition 25". It's what I have to work with right now. I tried XBMC, MythTV, Moovida and Geexbox and only Geexbox set my resolution correctly and was definitely the easiest to set up. It never occurred to me to try and put PCLinuxOS on the HTPC, and now I feel kinda dumb for not trying it earlier. It worked the first time, so I add Gateway E4300 to the mix. Now I have movies and music on my network through XBMC. I can even get on the internet to watch Hulu and listen to Pandora.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with people, mostly Windows fanboys and people that haven't tried PCLinuxOS, when they say Linux will never be mainstream or good enough for the masses. I have had an overwhelmingly positive experience due to Tex and the PCLinuxOS team. Thank you Tex, developers and everyone who watches over the forums to give help where it's needed.