Stopped this Distro-Hopper

[ericthered]

I think it's only appropriate that my first post on the forum be a testimonial to how much I have fallen in love with this distro.

When I say I've tried every major Linux distribution out there, I mean it.  Buggy Baboon, Debian, Fedora, Mint, Crunchbang, SalixOS, openSUSE, MEPIS, antiX, Puppy, and probably a few others I don't remember right now.  I was happiest with Debian because it was the least buggy and most flexible in terms of desktop environments.  Not only was I a distro-hopper, but I was a DE-hopper as well, running everything from KDE to pekWM.

I ran Debian for a good three months, but I soon grew tired of it.  The community was full of elitists and jerks.  I was sick of going into the guts of the OS whenever something went awry.  But mostly, I was feeling the usual burnout of the addictive distro-hopping cycle.

I've seen PCLOS bouncing around the top ten at Distrowatch for a while and I decided to give it a try.  I generally dislike .rpm distributions, but I read that PCLOS used APT/synaptic, which was a relief from the usual package management abominations I've run into on other .rpm distro's.

My first impression was that PCLOS was a KDE-only distro.  I'm not a fan of KDE because I'm a RAM-freak.  However, I was surprised to see XFCE, openbox, Enlightenment, and... jeez, just about every major desktop environment in the Linux world, wow.  I picked LXDE because it's always been a trusted companion and it plays nice on my modest little netbook.

Booting into the live environment was fast, the installation was even faster.  Best of all, my wireless card worked.  This used to be a non-issue with my Aspire One, but lately Debian and its children have been botching my wireless connection left and right for no perceivable reason.  It worked right out of the box with PCLOS.  I was excited already-- finally unplugging that ethernet cable that's been hooked up for the past three weeks!

It was all downhill from there.  Everything is so snappy and responsive.  The GUI config tools are intuitive and straightforward-- it's nice to see LXDE getting the attention it deserves.  But best of all, I love the community.  I've seen the PCLOS magazine and skimmed the forum.  It's nice to find a group of people that genuinely want to help others and share a mutual love of their distribution.  I'm really looking forward to my stay here.

One minor nitpick, though.  My sources.list was pointing to a bad repository when I first launched synaptic.  I did a little homework and found that ibiblio pulled a nice trick a few months back.  It was a breeze to download the fresh sources.list, but it probably wouldn't be so straightforward for a Linux newbie.  Perhaps the author of the LXDE edition should look into updating the .iso.

[sammy2fish]

ericthered, you are right!

I only played with about four to five Linux OS's.  But once the "playing" is done, this distro always draws me back.

It just clicks together here.  Yes, no OS is perfect, but this one is the best of the Linux Operating Systems out there.

Welcome here, Texstar, the dev's, and the forum are good...


p.s.  I use (http://pclosusers.com/pclosfiles/).  It works for me.

[AS]

Welcome ericthered!

about LXDE ISO, 14 hours ago: http://twitter.com/#!/NealBrks

that's  "just in time!"  

AS

[Archie]

Warm welcome to the community, EricTheRed. I can feel your sincerity and I think you'll stay on for the groovy ride. Your first post marked a very important connection between you and its readers. Many of us are glad to have your here and we'll be looking forward to reading more of your posts.

Regards,
Archie

[Crow]

Welcome ericthered now begin hopping between DE's    I do that   

Have you tried Enlightenment?  fast and beautiful, also check the memory use.

[exploder]

Nice testimonial ericthered! There is a lot to like about PCLinuxOS and it just keeps getting better. 

[djohnston]

Welcome, ericthered. This is a friendly bunch here.

A correction to as's URL post: about LXDE ISO, 14 hours ago: http://twitter.com/#!/NealBrks

[Rudge]

Welcome, to Zombocom 

[DarkBlueKoala]

Welcome to Distro Hoppers Anonymous.  I've been distro hopping clean for two months now and building.  Your testimonial was dead on for everything I have found here.  I am not afraid to get under the hood of a distro, but don't feel the obsessive need to edit config files and look for obscure dependencies just to run something basic.  In PCLOS we have both found a distro that is well put together, solid and requires minimal dirty work to keep running.  That being said, when the inevitable does break, there are plenty of people here to help.  Welcome home.

[ericthered]

about LXDE ISO, 14 hours ago: http://twitter.com/#!/NealBrks

that's  "just in time!"  

Funny how things work out like that   

My PCLOS time has been taken away for a few days.  My netbook's LCD screen was smashed, apparently by an unseen force.     Now I'm just waiting for a new screen in the mail... sigh...

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

Hi EricTheRed, thanks for your kind words - and remember, in PCLinuxOS, even KDE is fast!