Testimonial: From Distro To Distro To PCLinuxOS ... Or How I Quit Hopping

by kvonlinux

Hello, everyone!

I was a [expletive deleted] user my entire life (as far as personal PC use was concerned).

...until two months ago - when I discovered Linux.

I had heard of Linux, of course. I had simply never felt the need to stray from the beaten path, but, recently, I've had plenty of free time on my hands, so I decided to delve into the Linux universe, and I have been enjoying the heck out of learning as many ins and outs as possible every day since!

In the beginning, I had no idea which distro to try. (I didn't even realize that I wouldn't be stuck with the first one I picked. (I am a lifelong [expletive deleted] user, remember?))

At first, I was afraid of even attempting to partition my hard drive, so I installed it on an external USB drive and was pleasantly surprised how simple the (guided, GUI) installation process was (although, at the time, I had no idea that anything even existed which wasn't guided with a GUI). The desktop environment (a term which I was also unfamiliar with) was nearly identical to the one I had been accustomed to for the past thirty years, and I found that I now had access to something called a "BASH terminal" (which I'd read about online, but couldn't access because I had the Home version of [expletive deleted] as opposed to the Pro version - the latter being the more expensive version with all the features one actually wants and needs in their OS) as well as thousands of free applications - most of which I preferred to their paid counterparts!

I played with my new, green OS for about a week before I decided to search for a different distro -- one which would be more of a challenge to install as well as to use, and, this time, I went for [distro(X)] so I could learn more about the way Linux worked by installing and configuring each part of my system piece by piece. I got it going on my first attempt (with a little help from Pacman and elinks), and I was quite fond of the rolling release model. It took me about a week to get everything I wanted and needed installed and configured, but I was (and still am) quite pleased with the outcome. So...

I decided to try out the rest of the "top ten" distros (seeming how I now had an app called Virtualbox and could now install whatever OS I pleased without having to replace my existing system), and I think I went through around 25 of them (remember: each site listed different distros in their respective top-ten listing) before I finally landed on PCLinuxOS 2016: The Full Monty Edition.

WOW!!!

This distro has EVERYTHING loaded straight out of the box!

It has every single thing I'd installed into my [distro(x)] system, plus many more! (And that's saying something, because I had downloaded every app I came across in the repositories that I thought anyone I ever knew might benefit from!)

It is extremely easy to use.

Everything seems to have a sort of .... flow.

It just comes together perfectly. (I don't even feel the urge to personalize anything yet!)

...and any time I feel up to more of a challenge, I can always pop open a terminal, and the Full Monty Document Portal will guide me down the path to computational enlightenment! I love it!

It is also visually stunning - especially the 6 different work-spaces (hopefully I'm using the proper terminology when I refer to them as 'work-spaces'). I find that aspect particularly awesome, and so do my friends who stop by and notice my new, eye-catching OS. (It's the bull that catches their eye, I think.)

Anyways ....

I am glad I found PCLinuxOS.

It is now on my hard drive, and I am using it productively as well as learning new things from it every day!

Keep up the good work, everybody!