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Today I decided to try out another Linux distro... this time it's PCLinuxOS.

It's a derivative of Mandrake/Mandriva but uses Apt-get and Synaptic for package management. It's also a Live distro., so I was able to play around with it a bit today before installing.

Although PCLinuxOS does recommend a PC with 256MB of RAM, it (unlike my recent experiment with SuSE) does run on less. It booted up just fine on my PII test PC with 196MB of RAM, although it was a bit sluggish. But, that's expected, running KDE 3.4.2 strictly from a CD.

I started up it's graphical installation app (a link on the desktop made it easy to find and launch) and am installing it to my hard drive now. As mentioned above, unlike with SuSE, this installer seems to be working just fine... albeit a little slow.

I'm anxious to see how PCLinuxOS performs as a hard drive install. I'm not expecting it to be as snappy as Arch, but I'm hoping for something worth the effort to explore further.

There was a bit of toss-up for me as to which distro I was going to try next. It was between PCLinuxOS and aLinux (formerly known as Peanut). However, the aLinux desktop environment seemed to be a little "over the top" in eye-candy for me. PCLinuxOS seems much more cleaner and sleeker... hence perhaps a little more professional.

I'll keep in touch.

Judland, just out of curiousity, did you by mistake get the SUSE 10.1 alpha or did you get the stable 10.0?

Tsuroerusu wrote:Judland, just out of curiousity, did you by mistake get the SUSE 10.1 alpha or did you get the stable 10.0?

Nope, I downloaded the smaller network install iso for openSuSE 10.0.

Also, please don't take my comment above as an attack on SuSE or anything like that. I was just pointing out a fact. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to give SuSE a proper trial... which is no one's fault. That's just a decision the development team have made, regarding the hardware they require to run their OS. Not a big deal to me, as there are plenty of other distros. for me to choose from.

So what as your final verdict on arch? Is it going to replace your Kanotix install?

Judland wrote:

Tsuroerusu wrote:Judland, just out of curiousity, did you by mistake get the SUSE 10.1 alpha or did you get the stable 10.0?

Nope, I downloaded the smaller network install iso for openSuSE 10.0.

Also, please don't take my comment above as an attack on SuSE or anything like that. I was just pointing out a fact. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to give SuSE a proper trial... which is no one's fault. That's just a decision the development team have made, regarding the hardware they require to run their OS. Not a big deal to me, as there are plenty of other distros. for me to choose from.

I've grown out of the classic battle I used to have when I was seven years old: Nintendo 64 vs. PlayStation.
So I can definiteley accept your thoughts on SUSE.

Something the SUSE guys has been doing in the last two years is really making YaST look good with a nice Qt UI, and they've done that very very well IMO. But as you know, eyecandy costs resources. I think the reason my SUSE experience is as good as it is might be because even the older Pentium3 I had, which passes away a few months ago, had 394 mb RAM and my current machine has always had 512 and I've recently upgraded to 1 GB, and that is more than enough to run a VERY good looking KDE session, and have lots of apps running all the time, for example I have Kontact, Kopete, Konversation, Azureus, Gaim and other stuff running all the time because I use them so intensively.

But anyway, if you have over 256 MB of RAM, I think SUSE works very well, but as you say, anything under that makes for a miserable experience. But that said, I also think it's OK for SUSE to move the needle on system reqirements a little bit, because that means they can optimize for some other things and not having to worry about being able to run on older systems, that's what Slackware is really good for so I think that corner is covered.

At least SUSE system requirements are FAR LESS than that Microsoft will require for Vista, that shit is crazy for the 64-bit version 2 GB is the thing works "optimal" that's freaking crazy.

I like Arch and still have it running on a third PC of mine (basically the same setup as my Test PC (see, last year the office IT were getting rid of PCs that were "useless", so I was able to get two of them for myself)).

Anyway, I'm continuing with my learning and tinkering with Arch, trying to get comfortable with it. It's on the short track to replacing my Kanotix box for sure.

But am still curious as to how other distros have developed. I'm surprised how many of them now require more powerful resources now.... of course, a lot less resources require to operate than Mac or Microsoft garbage I agree.

There's one more distro I'd still like to try.... Vector Linux.

I'm trying out PC-BSD this week. FYI, our guest for next will be Kris Moore from the PC-BSD project.

Cool. I plan to be listening!

Patrick wrote:I'm trying out PC-BSD this week. FYI, our guest for next will be Kris Moore from the PC-BSD project.

For this week or next?

Some suggestion questions:
What is PC-BSD trying to accomplish that Linux can't? What are some key differences between PC-BSD and Linux and FreeBSD

CptnObvious999 wrote: For this week or next?

Next week, 11/30

CptnObvious999 wrote: Some suggestion questions:
What is PC-BSD trying to accomplish that Linux can't? What are some key differences between PC-BSD and Linux and FreeBSD

I was thinking the same thing. I was checking out their website and see there 's a linux binary compatability layer to run linux apps if there's no BSD package available for it. I'll probably install it this weekend at some point.

Sounds like an interesting guest, I just executed: pkg_add -r kde
on my workstation which is now running FreeBSD 5.4 (6.0 has some file system issues).

I have tried PC-BSD and I can't get it to boot on my machine, maybe it's because my drives are set up in a little funky way that the GUI installer is not detecting, but I tested PC-BSD under VMware, it's nice, and very very slim, also what Kris has done is created a package management system that uses "self contained" apps, a lot like what OS X is doing to avoid the dependency stuff.

Well, after a week of evenings trying out different Linux distros, here are my conclusions. My situation may be unique, so your mileage will obviously vary.

All of my testing was done on a PII-350Mhz with 196MB of RAM and an 8GB hard drive, with on-board sound, network and a 32X CD ROM. Our main household PC is more powerful and modern, but my wife would not be happy if I frigged that one up testing OSes.

However, I'm ready to toast my Kanotix system if/when I find the right replacement. And, with all that is going on with Debian and SID right now... I'm looking for something simpler/better.

So, the distros I've tried included (and forgive me if I get the version numbers wrong. I tried to stick to the most recent, stable versions, but with so many in such a long time, the numbers are a bit of a blur) SuSE 10.0 (network installer), PCLinuxOS 0.92, Kanotix 2005-04-RC15, VectorLinux 5.1, Slackware 10.1, ArchLinux 0.7.1-pre2

The Live CDs, Kanotix and PCLinuxOS, looked very nice and performed pretty well in "Live" mode. However, installation to the hard drive didn't work for me for either of them. Even after doing an integrity check of the CDs (which apparently tested okay).

Kanotix's installer wouldn't get past the set-up screen and PCLinuxOS would freeze somewhere in between 11 and 23% I tried installing several times but to no avail.

SuSE would boot up to the main splash screen, but the installer was extremely slow in even refreshing it's own screens... obviously requiring more RAM (or something) from my PC. It wasn't going anywhere.

Slackware's installer would run, but I'd have install errors peppered throughout the process. Never seemed to all the same errors a second or third time through. I'd always end up in a boot screen full of '99999999999999999999999999999' I even did an integrity check and second burn of the first CD. The installer just wasn't happy for some reason.

As for Vector Linux, the installer would fail as it was installing the file veclinux.bz2 It kept complaining that the root partition was full or a file was corrupted. I just fdisk'd the hard drive. Another bad burn? Possibly, but this one I took to the office one day and installed it successfully on an older laptop we had lying around.

I was now thinking that something was up with this PII, but Arch installed just fine and I'm now setting this system up with everything I've learned about Arch so far.

From my experiences these last few weeks, I can say that only Arch seemed to have performed without problems of any kind. Even if this PII's CD ROM or hard drive was too long gone for the more modern distros.... Arch still came through. I think I've found my new distro.

This weekend I'm really going to focus on my Arch skills and get the recipes down... preparing for the transition from a now out-of-date Kanotix system.

Judland wrote:This weekend I'm really going to focus on my Arch skills and get the recipes down... preparing for the transition from a now out-of-date Kanotix system.

You're gonna be the new Arch Cook, huh?

Anyway, what sort of stuff is Arch optimizing for?

Tsuroerusu wrote:You're gonna be the new Arch Cook, huh?

Anyway, what sort of stuff is Arch optimizing for?

I'm certainly going to try

Actually it isn't all that difficult. Since installing Arch on this second machine, I've kept notes on everything I've done. I'm up to setting up X11 and KDM on boot, but will call it a night for now.

If anyone wishes to follow along, I'll post my notes on the Net over the weekend for everyone to look at.

Again, it amazes me at how snappy Arch is, even on this PII.

Arch is optimized for i686 architectures.... so my test PC just makes the grade.

Yeah, Arch is snappy, snappy. My 800 mhz athlon testing box with arch installed is just as snappy (if not a little snappier than) my athlonXP 3200+ box running kubuntu.