One of a kind.

[andy]

To all involved with the creation and support of PCLOS and to anyone thinking of going this OS route,
Due to work taking most of my time, I had strayed away from Linux for about 3+ years until the spring of 2011 or so. My last linux install had been RHL v.8 and i liked it just fine.  Work started slowing and I was again looking arround at Lunux, then found out that since i left the circle momentarily, that the above mentioned distro was no more, sort of.  Started downloading/installing a lot of various distros and desktop versions. 

After a 17 OS multi-boot Linux install of various distros and all of them along side 2 versions of that other monopoly (for gaming), PCLOS KDE and Full Monty KDE created a look and feel with their OS that has become home for me.  I played around with each one of the 17 multi-boot installs for about five or six months to see what might happen, or not happen, and found that PCLOS KDE says what it does and does what it says.  It just flat out runs, and runs, and runs.  Especially liked that it utilized the RPM based repo as well, since I recalled that my previous Linux installs utilized it.

My old single core AMD XP3200 was showing it's age with todays KDE.  I just couldn't see anything better than a fresh new up to date system with PCLOS as the mainstay.  KDE was ok on the old setup, but when multi-tasking, the old system showed it's age.

I really like all the eye candy of the KDE of today, and the PCLOS version is by far the easiest to manage out there for me.
I have converted four people in the last six months to PCLOS KDE.  Two of the four were ready to have only Linux and to be done with with the other guys.  The other two had family that wanted to utilize software they already had for some projects and aren't really going to be the admin to their system or interested in learning wine or virtual box. I'll be their admin now, and those two now have a dual boot setup.  They are very happy, as am I.
Andy

[DutchWolfie]

Hi Andy,

You write about things we all may take for granted much too easy with our distro. We enjoy using our PCLinuxOS system every day and we get very very nervous when we stay away from it too long 
Don't we?
But it is nice to hear from new forum members who have the same rock solid experience using Linux the PCLinuxOS way.
Hope you may enjoy the ride for a lot off years to come.

Jos.

[Meemaw]

Welcome home to the best distro, andy!!!!

 

[djohnston]

Welcome, andy. I ran RedHat5 a few years back.

[Old-Polack]

andy:

Greetings, and welcome home to PCLinuxOS, and this crazy band of misfits on the forum. 

If you just make yourself at home and visit the various areas here, you'll find we're a bit loony tunes at times, especially in the Sandbox, but very helpful if you should encounter any problems that you can't readily solve. Try searching for an existing thread where someone else has experienced the same problem, first. All your questions may already have been answered, so this will usually save you some time getting things right again. If you don't find a ready made solution, just ask in the forum section you feel is most appropriate, and help will find you. That's why we're here.

You mentioned your aging single core AMD XP3200, but didn't say specifically if you had already upgraded to something newer, or were just in the planning stages of a hardware upgrade. If the former, what hardware did you choose, and how are things working out with that? If the latter, we have all kinds of different systems represented throughout our members, from off the shelf name brand desktop and laptop units, to user built from specifically chosen components, and can answer quite specific questions about the performance and reliability of our chosen kit, as a whole, or as individual parts.

[andy]

@DutchWolfie: 
Yes.  Nice to click on it and it just opens up and runs. No headaches, no driver issues, etc... Just a fine experience that works. I can come home and play on it, enjoy it, use it, and not have to "work on it". Perfect.  Picks up my droid phone, My flash cards, etc... even utilized the Megames repo to get the quake equivilant Open Arena installed. Works just as well in Linux.  I'm sold.

@Meemaw:
Thank you for having Me here. Glad to be a part of it all.

@djohnston
Thanks again.  The base is still very close to the same as RHL 6.0 which was my first dual boot install years ago, but the GUI has been much improved over the years. Haven't found anything buggy in PCLOS reactions to my hardware yet. It all just runs.

Thanks again,
Andy

[andy]

andy:

you'll find we're a bit loony tunes at times

Old-Polack,
Yes, I've been called loony myself a time or two. I should fit right in then. 
Yes, I did build up a new system just for PCLOS KDE!
This new one is not the fastest of the fastest, or the best of the best, but is all new tech just the same. A balanced well rounded system. It will game well enough, as well as multi-task, which i find myself doing more multi-tasking these days.

Mainboard is an Asus M5A97 which supports sata6 and AM3+.  No EIDE on this board but will emulate for cd/dvd drives if needed. Board does not have floppy drive headers either. Has USB 3.0 as well.
Has HD sound, Gb lan, UEFI bios with auto o/c features. lmsensors reads it fine so far as well.
Went with the AMD FX-8150 3.6GHz Bulldozer and it just loves this OS.  Cheapy entry level liquid cooled processor setup, H-50 equiv.
8Gb of 1600 RAM and using the .pae kernel.  The slight performance hit shows for that,, just slightly though. Still not using anywhere near 2Gb of ram and never utilized swap so far (may get rid of /swap), but at least it shows all that is there though, and still smokes the old system speed.
Nvidia Zotac GTX560 2Gb video card. Plays everything i have in the other monopoly OS on full tilt boggie max settings no problem. Same with Open Arena in Linux.
Thermaltake TR2 850W modular P/S.
Multi-flash card reader.
Lite-On CD/DVD+R RW DL
New Seagate 500Gb sata6Gbps drive has already gone out on me. Pulled it out 3 weeks ago and reloaded to a WD Green 500Gb sata3Gbps drive and immediately noticed the speed hit. Dang!  Need to RMA the Seagate to get the speed back.
Also installed is a WD Green 3Tb and have 2 more WD Green 1Tb drives in the old system to bring over. Never enough storage.
I still remember getting my first "huge 10GB" drive and thinking,, man,, it'll take forever to fill this up!!!!!!!   That was a big jump from the 1Gb and 2Gb drives that were installed at that time. What do i do with these Win3.1 Install Floppy's I still have? Ok, there's the loony side!

So far, PCLOS hasn't gone wrong finding any of my hardware. I plug it in and it picks it up. Android phone flash drive too. Haven't been able to bog down this new system yet. Like a dream. Same in all systems I've booted it into, Live CD or Live USB flash drives.  Picked up all hardware in the other systems i installed to for friends also. No problems. Like a dream.  I'm not going anywhere, if ya'll can put up with me.
Andy