Testimonials

by john030655

Well, I've been using PCLinuxOS for just over six months now (KDE version). I've had the odd crash and lock up along the way, but all these have been caused by my fiddling. I have discovered some icon sets work, some lock the system and sometimes I've asked the system to do too much. But I now have it set how I want, and it is very very stable. Even for my set up, it is the fastest OS I have used as a full desktop installation.

I also love that I don't have to wait for a new version to come out. I've set up auto updates and know that every time I use the computer, I'm running the most up to date system I can. It's very user friendly, once you get used to it, and does everything that any other distro or other OS can do and more.

To be honest, for a while I got a little bored. There was nothing to do: no defrag, no registry repairs, no re-install to the latest version. Then it dawned on me. I can now use the computer for what it was intended for.

I am really impressed with KDE. I like that it hasn't changed too much, unlike Gnome. My computer still looks like a computer, and not a 22" iPhone.

So, a big thanks to the team behind PCLinuxOS. You have, without a doubt, made the best Linux OS there is, in my opinion.

Like the beer advert, if Heineken made an OS, it would probably be this one.

John

PCLOS KDE and here to stay.

by laethe

Last night I had a dream of the Windows 3.11 screensaver Flying Windows (if you're old enough, you know) and that made me think about the past, and how I finally ended up here.

I believe I'm of the first generation which has lived its entire life amongst computers. I remember when my father carried home our first one. It was 386SX with amazing 33Mhz processor and DOS. And man, was that the stuff! Soon after, we got a 486 with Windows 3.11 (must have been something like '92-'93), and 33.6kbs modem! Oh the configuration! I believe I could still get on the net with Trumpet Winsock and Netscape.

And the games! Original Settlers, the first NHL Hockey, Civilization 1&2, Wolf 3D & Doom. Dammit, that was amazing at the time. And countless shareware games, side-scrollers and simulations. Oh, the times.

Sometime around 2000 was my first contact with Linux (got fed up with Win 98 and ME), but that was a great failure. I bought BestLinux2000 at a local store. It was a localized version of RedHat with a huge manual, but unfortunately many things have been changed in the release since the printing of the manual, so it wasn't really of use. I believe I tried something else too, but can't remember for sure.

Then there was a long gap in my interest of computers, after the release of XP. I used it until last year, but it was just a tool for me, since I started this so-called thing called 'living' at that time.

Looking back, I have to wonder how I'm still alive, but I still can't regret anything. I used to play in a punk band, hang around with some really weird people, do drugs and drink (too) much. There was weeks of drunken haze, doing all the stupid things that seemed really funny at the time. Today, some of those friends are dead, some are in mental hospitals, many are ... people I care not to hang out with. But back to the point: It's been almost a year when I was dating a girl who had quite strong left-wing policies and she convinced me to give Linux a go once again. I had just tried Win7 and it was actually really good (can I say that here?), but she was really hot so what else could I do?

So, last January I started my Linuxing with "another distro" and quite frankly, the the only difference I could see compared to Windows was the inability to play good games with it (yes, I tried wine, but nothing seemed to work completely). However, I grew into it, began to really like it and started tinkering. After about a six months I decided that I needed something else and stumbled on distrowatch.org. I finally ended up with Arch Linux and fell in love with its spartan simplicity, speed, and the control which I had over it. I had a lot of free time at the moment, having broken up with my girlfriend, being unemployed and slowly starting to detach completely out of society, so I learned a lot of things during summer.

I've been always somewhat of a music freak (http://last.fm/user/laethe), so one of the things really annoyed with Linux was its lack of GOOD music players. Sure, there seemed to be dozens of players, but they all seemed like copies, with the same features and a lot of unnecessary bloat. Finally I found gmusicbrowser, which is still the only Linux MP3 player that can be compared to foobar2000. And what do you know, I'd say it even beats foobar 4-3. Still, I wasn't completely happy with gmb, so I spent about two months learning how to code. I really put myself into it, spending about 8-10 hours *every day* staring at gmb source – but in the end I learned something. The result was laitePLAY (https://github.com/laite/laiteplay), and I'm really happy about it. It's damn close to perfect – for me. There is only one minor bug, which would be easy to fix, but as with most of the things in life, if I know how to do something, it's probably not worth doing. It's bothersome. It's work. So once I got laitePLAY to the state where it works, I've not touched any code since and I believe I never will, unless I really want to do something I can't with current software.

So, in the end I used Arch until a few weeks ago, when I finally got enough of the general instability and the huge amount of updates. That's when I began the Big Search for the perfect distribution. I tried dozens of distros. Many of them were good. Many were bad. Some were simple and some too complex for me. I never meant to keep PCLinuxOS. It was just one of the many, but for some reason I really liked it. You know, how every distro has certain “feel” to it? PCLinuxOS seemed instantly comfortable, adjustable and stable – I can't explain why. I've learned that many things in life can't be explained, and I accept that. I even removed it couple of times to give room to other distros, but always re-installed it. Now I have Arch with KDE as a backup distro, and PCLinuxOS as my main OS, and I couldn't be happier.

Finally, I'd like to say hello to everybody here, and thank if someone of you bothered to read my ranting - I just got to write it down somewhere and this seemed like a good place.