Kudos

[dixonpete]

I've been around PCLinuxOS for about 2.5 years now. I dropped my Windows use to roughly zero almost immediately thereafter and have very much enjoyed not having to fight my PC every day since. This week I converted two users. The second one is the reason I'm writing this testimonial

A neighbour wanted to upgrade her Windows P3, so I put an ad on Kijiji ( think Craigslist) saying I wanted a P4, minimally spec'ed out with a 40GB HD and 512 Mb RAM and was willing to spend $75 for it. Within 2 hours I got a phone call offering up a 2.8 Ghz P4,  1 GB RAM and an 80 GB HD, as well as a 52X CD and a DVD R/W drive all for $60. It had 64 MB AGP video but he was willing to throw in a 128MB board as well though he didn't know if it worked. Licensed copies of Windows XP and Office XP were already installed.

We made the deal and I picked up the box and brought it home. The PCLOS LiveCD ( burned as a DVD) worked fine and the install detected the Windows and offered up the partitioning slider to create a dual boot system. I allowed 15 GB for Windows and told the system to go ahead. A very few minutes and few clicks later PCLOS was installed. A quick boot up and a few tweaks ( automatic login, turning off login and logout sounds) and a Synaptic update via a hard cable network connection and the machine was really shaping up!

Next I installed Open Office and Gnumeric, my fav spreadsheet. Video seemed a little slow and the KWin effects only partially worked, so I pulled the 64MB video and tried the 128MB card. It worked! Much smoother.

I then plugged in a wireless TP-Link USB adaptor, rebooted, found the adaptor was recognized and went into PCC to enter the network password. All was recognized and the box was now happily wirelessly connecting to the Internet.

The printer I had bought for this system was next - a HP DeskJet 1660, $20 at Walmart ( $28 after taxes and recycling fee). PCLOS automatically detected it and a sample page off the Web printed flawlessly. The relatively high-end ($40) speakers I bought sounded great as well.

So, for less than $150 Canadian my neighbour now has a wonderfully quick, beautiful OS and software collection at her disposal. Installation was absolutely quick and effortless with no glitches whatsoever.

I just had to write to say even after these several years of daily experience with PCLOS I'm still amazed at how good it actually is. Hats off to Tex and the rest of you guys, well done!

Pete

[String6]

That's a cool story.
It's good to see older hardware still being put to good use.
I've got my own build now, but I used a AMD Duron 750 MHz machine for over five years.
I was given a Athlon 1200 to use thereafter (2 more years).

Linux is very adaptable and PCLinuxOS is amongst the very best examples. As you have shown.