Free Penguin guide - PCLinuxOS
Wiki PCLinuxOS
PCLinuxOS often abbreviated as PCLOS, is a desktop Linux distribution.
It is a free operating system for personal computers aimed at ease of use. The precursor to PCLinuxOS was a set of RPM packages created to improve successive versions of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux).
These packages were created by Bill Reynolds, a packager better known as Texstar.
From the year 2000 to 2003, Texstar maintained his repository of RPM packages in parallel with the PCLinuxOnline Web site. In 2003 Texstar created a fork of Mandrake Linux 9.2 (which was released in October 2003).
Working closely with The LiveCD Project, Texstar has since developed that fork independently into a full-fledged distribution. The initial releases were successively numbered as "previews" i.e. p5, p7, p8 up to p81a, then p9, p91, p92. More recently, MiniME 0.93 was released on 2006-05-16 as a minimal "Live & Install" CD.
MiniME was designed for a small and fast installation, allowing users to customize their system by choosing all of the desired applications. In August 2006 three new CDs/ISOs, numbered 0.93a, were released: MiniMe, Junior and Big Daddy.
At the same time, the original packages that make up KDE have been split into smaller ones, while some less essential portions of KDE have been omitted on the CD.
As a result, Texstar was able to fit the OpenOffice.org package into the BigDaddy release. MiniMe remains a minimal install for experienced users wishing to add their own selection of packages, while Junior adds a few essential desktop-oriented packages, meeting the user somewhere between the two other releases. With the advent of PCLinuxOS 2007, also known as .94, there has been an entire shift to a more modern code which will require a complete reinstall to this version, but will then continue from there to allow updates without further re-installs. The new version features a new look, and built-in 3D effects. Both Beryl and Compiz come pre-installed, and can be configured with the PCLOS Control Center.
A new logo has also been designed for the new version, and is incorporated in the boot screen.
A new login screen has been designed, entitled "Dark". PCLinuxOS 2007 final version was released on 2007-05-21. PCLinuxOS is distributed as a LiveCD, which can also be installed to a local hard disk drive. When used as a LiveCD, it can work with a USB flash drive, where the user's configuration and personal data are saved.
Once locally installed on a PC's hard drive, the user of PCLinuxOS can add, remove or update packages by utilising the Advanced Packaging Tool (or APT), a package management system (originally from the Debian distribution), together with Synaptic Package Manager, a GUI frontend to APT. Although it retains a similar "look and feel" to Mandriva Linux, PCLinuxOS has diverged significantly.
Most parts, like the Linux kernel, GCC and KDE (the main desktop environment), have been independently packaged since 2000, when the project was launched as a modification of Mandrake.
The code was officially forked into an independent project in 2003, but after three years of contiguous development, the devs took advantage of further development in (the renamed) Mandriva, and forked the code again for PCLinuxOS 2007. PCLinuxOS maintains its own software repository, available via the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and its Synaptic front-end, completely replacing Mandriva's urpmi.
PCLinuxOS endeavors to maintain a fully valid upgrade path for version 1.0. This means that an installation could be continuously updated to the latest versions of packages, hence foregoing the need to re-install the entire distribution upon each successive release.
In the test releases before 1.0, it has sometimes been necessary to perform a reinstallation. Other differences include its own menu arrangement and custom graphics and icon sets. PCLinuxOS places specific emphasis on desktop computing, concentrating its efforts for home or small business environments, hence paying less attention to other more "traditional" uses, like servers (although packages for most server tasks are available). PCLinuxOS can play back proprietary multimedia files (wma, mp3, mpg, rm, mov, etc) by default, something that some Linux distributions cannot do without further user configuration, because of legal and ideological issues.
However, it cannot play most DVDs by default, although libdvdcss is available in the official software repository. The legality of this distribution is in question since the leadership has not secured license agreements with the owners of the third party multimedia codecs they do include in the distribution.
This distribution is deemed non-free by the FSF standards.
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