Saw a notice that the subject's beta 2 for their first KDE 4.4.x release was available. Downloaded, burned and booted it.
First impression: I saw HAL leave a note on the screen about detecting my Intel GM45 chip, setting up its parameters, and configuring the AGP aperture. The result was that when KDE 4.4.1 came it it was lightening fast. Installed Stellarium and got 50-60 fps, which is unprecedented for this GM45 chip in any version of Kubuntu, Mandriva, or several other LiveCDs I've tried in the last year and a half. The best Lucid gives me in Stellarium is about half, 25-40 fps. Turning on Desktop effects had NO noticeable slowdown in PCLOS. In Kubuntu it drops my fps to 10-15 fps. Kubuntu's 3D gives me an occasional tearing over the bottom panel. PCLOS's 3D is rock solid stable.
Second impression: nice boot screen, splash screen and background screen, which are PCLOS trademarks. Both KDE's Systemsettings and the former Mandrake SysConfig Center are there. Systemsettings is set as a tree, making it look more like KDE 3.5's control panel. The fourth tab in Systemsettings is supposed to contain the old Mandrake control center, but it never showed up. The classic KMenu tree is default.
All in all, TexStar's hand on the wheel is obvious, as PCLOS seems back on course to its former quality, prior to the hurricane chasing TexStar out of Huston two years ago, and then him following that with about a year's sabbatical. The only weakness I noticed was that the PCLOS repository shows about 12,000 RPM based applications, only 40% of those present in Kubuntu's repositories. But, if it has everything you need the others are superfluous. I ran PCLinuxOS for about two years before I moved to Mandriva in August of 2008 to enjoy the benefits of KDE 4.1 because PCLOS wasn't going to it any time soon. I moved to Kubuntu because Mandriva wasn't going to KDE 4.2.
Since moving to Kubuntu I've enjoyed the pleasures of a LARGE repository full of apps, an excellent codecs support site, the glories of apt-get, which I hadn't known about, to supplement Synaptic, the joys of the deb package system, and this fine forum (not to disparage the excellent forum at PCLOS).
The things about Kubuntu I like the least, which PCLOS made stand out like sore thumbs, are:
1) lack of xorg.conf, or an xorg.conf creation or adjustment tool, leaving one to the whims of HAL or whatever. Not bad if HAL figures out your video the way PCLOS did mine, but not so good if it does no better than what Kubuntu does. PCLOS had DrakeX.
2) GRUB2. Grub's menu.lst is MUCH easier to configure than Grub2's grub.conf.
3) The absence of a separate password for root be default. Even though I am comfortable with sudo, I still much prefer the old root paradigm. I don't reestablish that paradigm because I have no way of knowing how Kubuntu and all of its activities will react if I do so.
4) Upstart. I still prefer the inittab paradigm and the method of user control it offers. Probably just old habits.
None of these four problems are sufficient to make me move to another distro, but the fifth, if it becomes a problem is ... that because Kubuntu is built on top of Ubuntu, when MONO becomes inseparable from Ubuntu, and hence from Kubuntu, then I shall leave. Probably to Debian, despite how good PCLOS is.
But, PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE 4.4.1 is an EXCELLENT release, and will be even better when it goes gold.
First impression: I saw HAL leave a note on the screen about detecting my Intel GM45 chip, setting up its parameters, and configuring the AGP aperture. The result was that when KDE 4.4.1 came it it was lightening fast. Installed Stellarium and got 50-60 fps, which is unprecedented for this GM45 chip in any version of Kubuntu, Mandriva, or several other LiveCDs I've tried in the last year and a half. The best Lucid gives me in Stellarium is about half, 25-40 fps. Turning on Desktop effects had NO noticeable slowdown in PCLOS. In Kubuntu it drops my fps to 10-15 fps. Kubuntu's 3D gives me an occasional tearing over the bottom panel. PCLOS's 3D is rock solid stable.
Second impression: nice boot screen, splash screen and background screen, which are PCLOS trademarks. Both KDE's Systemsettings and the former Mandrake SysConfig Center are there. Systemsettings is set as a tree, making it look more like KDE 3.5's control panel. The fourth tab in Systemsettings is supposed to contain the old Mandrake control center, but it never showed up. The classic KMenu tree is default.
All in all, TexStar's hand on the wheel is obvious, as PCLOS seems back on course to its former quality, prior to the hurricane chasing TexStar out of Huston two years ago, and then him following that with about a year's sabbatical. The only weakness I noticed was that the PCLOS repository shows about 12,000 RPM based applications, only 40% of those present in Kubuntu's repositories. But, if it has everything you need the others are superfluous. I ran PCLinuxOS for about two years before I moved to Mandriva in August of 2008 to enjoy the benefits of KDE 4.1 because PCLOS wasn't going to it any time soon. I moved to Kubuntu because Mandriva wasn't going to KDE 4.2.
Since moving to Kubuntu I've enjoyed the pleasures of a LARGE repository full of apps, an excellent codecs support site, the glories of apt-get, which I hadn't known about, to supplement Synaptic, the joys of the deb package system, and this fine forum (not to disparage the excellent forum at PCLOS).
The things about Kubuntu I like the least, which PCLOS made stand out like sore thumbs, are:
1) lack of xorg.conf, or an xorg.conf creation or adjustment tool, leaving one to the whims of HAL or whatever. Not bad if HAL figures out your video the way PCLOS did mine, but not so good if it does no better than what Kubuntu does. PCLOS had DrakeX.
2) GRUB2. Grub's menu.lst is MUCH easier to configure than Grub2's grub.conf.
3) The absence of a separate password for root be default. Even though I am comfortable with sudo, I still much prefer the old root paradigm. I don't reestablish that paradigm because I have no way of knowing how Kubuntu and all of its activities will react if I do so.
4) Upstart. I still prefer the inittab paradigm and the method of user control it offers. Probably just old habits.
None of these four problems are sufficient to make me move to another distro, but the fifth, if it becomes a problem is ... that because Kubuntu is built on top of Ubuntu, when MONO becomes inseparable from Ubuntu, and hence from Kubuntu, then I shall leave. Probably to Debian, despite how good PCLOS is.
But, PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE 4.4.1 is an EXCELLENT release, and will be even better when it goes gold.
). The comments about MONO would also apply--I'm assuming--to distros based right off of Ubuntu like Mint, right?
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