Thanks for the comment!

If you are interested in good KDE distros, you can also look at Mandriva Spring and Linux Mint 9, and if you are adventurous try OpenSUSE 11.3 as well.

Unfortunately the live CD has only one video player, SMPLayer, which sometimes refuse to display a paused video it properly displayed just a few minutes ago. It should have come with VLC media player by default. As to artwork, guys, seriously. PCLOS needs to work better to come up with a more pleasing, modern desktop look.

Since it Ubuntu was mentioned here, let me say that the only hassle I had with it was installing restricted extras (few clicks at synaptic) and that’s it. Restricted multi-media codecs takes care of all video and audio requirements you can throw at it. Ubuntu 10.04 also has the best desktop theme of the current crop of distros: it sports sets of icons that are professional-looking and polished.

You are a KDE fan, and like most KDE, or GNOME, or $desktopenvironment fans you are unable to consider that anything else might be better than your chosen desktop. That is fine, you like KDE, and for good reason, KDE is a superb desktop environment.

I need to do comparative reviews though, and if you read closely you will notice that I include at least one of each of Gnome and KDE when I compare a desktop environment with another, and also when I review a distribution.

Note that with this PCLOS Gnome review it came up against Ubnuntu (Gnome) as well as MINT (gnome) and then two KDE distros. The fact that both KDE environments do rather badly in these reviews is telling, don’t you think?

Why not try running a few distros in a vm then? It saves you having to partition. If you like the feel of it then you can partition and install after that.

Glad you found a distro you liked!

Have a nice day.

Q

I would disagree strongly, PCLOS Gnome is not the best day to day Linux, there are better options out there.

Great to hear from an older Linux user! Know what, I never thought of the firewall. UFW is pretty easy to set up as well, but it is largely not necessary.

One thing I did note, is that a control center achieves one thing, but adds another. It places all important system tasks in one area (good) but often adds another layer between the user and the task needed to be done (bad)

I read that Ubuntu was going to get a Mandriva style control centre, I hope they really do it well, because it might detract from the user experience.

people never mention the ridiculous ease with with shorewall may be configured in that (or parent) distro. click click done (and compare what you get outta that to say gufw or anything else correspondingly easy to setup).

i don’t use pclos, btw, but i did run it for 6 months maybe five years ago (gnome). i could just work, basically, and didn’t have to endlessly build and configure. now, i give it and mint and to new people to try out (and stopped giving out ubuntu because it’s not as well-received). okay, i’m a geezer so the people in my sample are, too, but they keep pclos and mint & just stop hopping.

people also never mention how unforgiveable it is to require a distro to _download_ shorewall to set it up, but that’s not your axe to grind…i always wondered how something that fat cannot include shorewall in what it ships (when it’s a dep of its own setup).

it strikes me that, on a column-inch basis, much of this was about preferences. fair enough–it’s your deal.

I have toyed with PCLOS Gnome as well, and came to much the same conclusions that you did. It is a great concept, but it lacks the integration, ease of use and overall polish. It is kind of a let down, since I came to it expecting the same quality of its parent/sister distro and namesake. I consider it more of a derivative work that just needs some more work. I am glad to see that it is coming along nicely and I look forward to having a quality Gnome-based alternative to Ubuntu and Fedora that I can demo install for new converts to open source. Thanks for taking the time and for stepping it up with your review approach, too.

@ Sammy: Although this is off topic, Mint and Ubuntu maintain a release cadence of every six months; this is Ubuntu’s push. In my opinion, a serious OS is good for 2-3 years, which their LTS releases fulfill. Consider the others stepping stones between them, since they are disposable. BOTH OS’s recommend a clean install and for good reasons:
- An LZMA/squashfs compressed iso is a lot less to download than uncompressed packages.
- The iso provides an opportunity to confirm that the new release works on your hardware. or doesn’t before you bork your current install.
- Kernel upgrades and such can bork your system. Many times, it’s only Xorg being kooky, but when it reduces the machine to a console or WSOD, that’s not cool to users. Yes, I have learned how to fix a lot of that, but we shouldn’t expect it of folks. When it works it is great, but that isn’t always.
- A little partition planning makes upgrading a good OS a cake walk. Mint is catering to this very well.

@Frank: Really? Is your bridge operation having such an off day that you have to come here and insult yourself? Sigh…