Post by mikkh on Nov 8, 2009 14:14:41 GMT
With all the hype surrounding the new Ubuntu, Mandriva have quietly released their 2010 version, so I thought I'd take it for a spin.
PClinuxOS is based on Mandriva, so it made sense for me to have a sneak preview of what the next PClinuxOS will have to offer.
While Mandriva has a free version, their main intent is to make you buy the 'powerpack' version or become a paid member. There are not enough benefits to justify the powerpack for me, but for raw beginners, they may like the limited support and pre-installed software that is not in the free version. The free version is fine and the mostly free software that is included in the powerpack can be installed afterwards anyway.
I went for the Gnome version because KDE 4, while looking very pretty, still seems like work in progress and a bit flaky sometimes.
It boots as a live CD and after making a few changes like removing their enticements to make me buy it and swapping the task bar to the bottom (after removing the unnecessary one already there) I was ready to install it for real.
I had a spare Linux partition already, so the install was straightforward and reasonably quick. I like the way it removed packages not needed for my system before the install - nice touch.
Install finished, it was time to reboot. I was pleased to see the changes I made before the install were transferred to the finished system, so that saved me a bit of time.
Nice default theme to Gnome, which looks more like the old KDE and shows a lot of effort has been taken to make it unique - unlike Ubuntu, which is basically bog standard Gnome.
So far, so good, let's do a bit of surfing...... Firefox 3.5.3 is a couple of revisions short of the latest version but that's not a big problem and it did include a pretty up to date version of Flash already so most sites were instantly available. Java wasn't installed, but was available through the package manager, so I installed it (version 1.6.16)
It comes with most things you need to get started, like OpenOffice, Gimp, Multimedia players, CD burner, Instant messaging, Ekiga (skype) etc and some good configuration tools to tailor it to your needs.
Seems very quick in use and so far I can't fault it - well minor niggling things, but that's just me being a perfectionist.
9/10
PClinuxOS is based on Mandriva, so it made sense for me to have a sneak preview of what the next PClinuxOS will have to offer.
While Mandriva has a free version, their main intent is to make you buy the 'powerpack' version or become a paid member. There are not enough benefits to justify the powerpack for me, but for raw beginners, they may like the limited support and pre-installed software that is not in the free version. The free version is fine and the mostly free software that is included in the powerpack can be installed afterwards anyway.
I went for the Gnome version because KDE 4, while looking very pretty, still seems like work in progress and a bit flaky sometimes.
It boots as a live CD and after making a few changes like removing their enticements to make me buy it and swapping the task bar to the bottom (after removing the unnecessary one already there) I was ready to install it for real.
I had a spare Linux partition already, so the install was straightforward and reasonably quick. I like the way it removed packages not needed for my system before the install - nice touch.
Install finished, it was time to reboot. I was pleased to see the changes I made before the install were transferred to the finished system, so that saved me a bit of time.
Nice default theme to Gnome, which looks more like the old KDE and shows a lot of effort has been taken to make it unique - unlike Ubuntu, which is basically bog standard Gnome.
So far, so good, let's do a bit of surfing...... Firefox 3.5.3 is a couple of revisions short of the latest version but that's not a big problem and it did include a pretty up to date version of Flash already so most sites were instantly available. Java wasn't installed, but was available through the package manager, so I installed it (version 1.6.16)
It comes with most things you need to get started, like OpenOffice, Gimp, Multimedia players, CD burner, Instant messaging, Ekiga (skype) etc and some good configuration tools to tailor it to your needs.
Seems very quick in use and so far I can't fault it - well minor niggling things, but that's just me being a perfectionist.
9/10