from Tovian

Hello. I am a newbie. Not to computing, but to Linux. I've been working with computers of one sort or another since 1973. A little over a year ago I decided to expand my current horizon beyond the Windows world and have a go with Linux. I was actually looking for a better "file server" solution for small "Windows" (P2P) networks. I got involved with another version of Mepis - oops, I meant to say another version of Linux - and really learned a lot. But it was a difficult time for someone with no Unix/Linux background. Nevertheless, what I learned during the last year made me truly appreciate how easy and solid this PCLinuxOS really is.

I am still running three to five Windows boxes on the same network with this Linux box - and I have a one-man computer-support business with all Windows clients - but I am doing more and more with Linux. I am already having fun with it again. In just three days I've accomplished more on this OS than I did for months with the other one. I'm not saying the other one is bad - it's just that this one is so much easier to deal with. It’s much more user-friendly - and - things that are supposed to work actually DO work.

I'm looking forward to learning a lot more about Linux - and I already have a good feeling about PCLinuxOS.

From nitrogen_widget

I switched to the latest KDE build, imported all my email, my docs & everything else. Since I used Thunderbird and OpenOffice, it just took an add-on to import all my email & with LibreOffice, nothing had to be done. With Chromium, I just log into Google & import my bookmarks. With Picasa and Dropbox, it's all good.

Eventually I'm going to want to get back to D3 and WOW's expansion next month is sure to break under Wine, but honestly I just don't miss Win7 at all. KDE has enough eye-candy and the repo pretty much has an equivalent or a Linux version of what I was using, so the whole thing was fairly seamless. The boot speed & the speed of the PC is faster also.

PCLinuxOS - KDE 4.8 isn't the second coming or anything, but neither was Win7. I actually went back to my XP install for games just because the Win7 install takes up so much more space.

I've never gone this long off of Windows (at home) before. I have to use it at work.

Oh, my Mom has been on the Openbox version for the last yr on her P3 with 512mb ram. I might upgrade her to LXDE Mini because I haven't updated her system at all since I gave it to her.

Thanks for the great distro.

From David Cornelius

Hi all!

I admit I'm a Windows developer, but I was raised on the command-line in DOS days and Linux shell scripts have never scared me off. In fact, I still use vi quite often. Yes, I know Windows inside and out, but am bound and determined to increase my knowledge and use of Linux. In fact, I can now honestly say that I have more Linux machines at home than Windows. But that mostly because I've recycled some old laptops that were choking with Win XP but now run fine with Linux.

I like using a different flavor of Linux on each machine so I can really learn the differences between them and figure how to get around on any Linux system, no matter where I am. My oldest and slowest machine runs Lubuntu (LXDE), an old laptop runs DreamLinux with Xfce, I have a server with a popular distribution that this forum software refuses to acknowledge (hint: it starts and ends with a "U"), and an XBMC machine I plan on hooking up to an HDTV soon.

But my biggest and newest Linux machine, which sits right next to my Windows 7 development machine, runs PCLinuxOS Full Monty with KDE4! Of all the distributions I've played around with, I keep coming back to PCLOS because it works so well. And from what I can tell, the community here is great and there's plenty of documentation. How many distributions have their own monthly magazine?

I'm from the Portland, Oregon metro area and have lived in the Pacific Northwest all my life. My day job involves writing applications and plug-ins to support a Windows retail Point-of-sale system. My weekend hobbies including hiking in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge or the nearby Cascade Mountains.

Anyway, I will poke in here from time to time and hope to get to know some of you a little better.

From Lutz1948

Another newcomer...

Hello to everyone, and thanks to all guys and girls who made it possible that I can easily jump onto the running train! Or lay myself comfortably into the ready made bed, with most problems already solved by others.

My name is Lutz, and I was born in the first half of the last century. I am not an absolute first-time user to Linux, since some years I sniffed a bit here and there, but always jumped back to the more familiar system, or better to say, to the familiar applications, when I wanted something to be done fast.

And I am not even an absolute newbie to PCLinuxOS, I have in mind to register to this friendly forum already since one year or more. My problem, believe it or not, was to find a sign-in name fit for me old newbie! Well, this problem is SOLVED!

Minutes before I registered today I felt a bit ashamed, when I got to read about the closure of the PCLinuxOS Magazine forum. Surely I could have participated a little, telling others about MY long way to Linux. However, this magazine is highly appreciated, I have all the PDF's back to 2006-09 orderly saved to a separate folder. And also I read the magazine, at least what is of interest for me.

Last but not least I have to thank Hero-Member “Bicolano”, who more than one year ago stopped his car beside me, and with the words “Good to meet you, I have something for you!” handed to me the newest PCLinuxOS Live CD! Nevertheless, when on this CD I could not find my favorite Opera-Browser, and then did not know yet how easy it is to install. I preferred to download Full Monty instead (which, using my slow 3rd-world Internet connection took me some days).

Too many words already for a newcomer, who basically has not much to say. My ups and downs using Linux together with another system could fill some pages.

After some major hardware changes both XP and Win7 could not find ANY of my 3 hard drives, while Win98 could see a large drive, but did not know about NTFS, and FAT 16 did not like the size of the partition... Sure, I knew about that, but had to be reminded first by try and error.

However, here I am, since about one month Windows-free!

Kind regards to everyone.

From auxe

Hi everyone, I am really impressed with PCLinuxOS and completely new to it. I have always been a Windows user, but have become dissapointed with it.

When I bought my daughter a new build PC, I was waiting for The Windows 7 disk to arrive, so I installed Pclinuxos on it. It found all the hardware, and even found the drivers for an old Safecom USB wifi dongle. It worked flawlessly.

I have now tried the live cd 2012 on three desktops and three laptops, and it has worked perfectly! I installed it on a small dell pentium 4 with 1 gig of ram and it runs far better than with the previous OS, with YouTube at 720 HD it was flawless! Its actually a very usable computer again, unlike its previous OS, which could barely display any youtube without the swapfile going crazy. It seems a much lighter OS.

Hats off to you guys for making such a great OS!

I love the way it leads new users by the hand when installing, and the ease of using the synaptic installer. I have tried two other distros, but they seem more interested in the newest versions of programs and not so interested in stability and getting the installation to work with lots of hardware. It just wore me out trying to get hardware to work because I am new to Linux and didn't have the time to devote to it.

Even my friends who usually say that Linux "is to time consuming and complicated to get all the drivers working" have been really impressed with Pclinuxos. Now they have installed it to! and are really gaining an interest in it.

I never thought I would see the day when I wouldn't be using Windows. But it looks like its here for me.

Really impressive! I can't imagine the amount of work it must take, but thank you!