PCLinuxOS

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**PCLinuxOS**

The default desktop of PCLinuxOS 2007.
Website:	http://www.pclinuxos.com
OS family:	Linux
Source model:	Open source
Latest stable release:	.93 /
Kernel type:	Monolithic kernel
License:	Various
Working state:	Current

PCLinuxOS, often abbreviated as pclos, is a GNU/Linux distribution. As such, it constitutes a complete operating system for personal computers, bundled together with a variety of software titles.

PCLinuxOS is distributed as a LiveCD, which can also be installed to a local hard drive. When used as a LiveCD, it can work with a USB Key (or thumbdrive), where the user's configuration and personal data are saved. Once locally installed on a PC's hard drive, the user of PCLinuxOS can add, remove or update all desired software titles (packages) by utilising the Advanced Packaging Tool (or APT), a package management system (originally from the Debian distribution), together with Synaptic, a GUI frontend to APT.

1 History and Background
2 Relationship with Mandriva Linux
3 Ability to Remaster
4 PCLinuxOS Magazine
5 Multimedia Playback
6 Printers
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] History and Background

The precursor to PCLinuxOS was a set of RPM packages created to improve successive versions of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux). These packages were created by a packager known as Texstar. From the year 2000 to 2003, Texstar maintained his repository of RPM packages in parallel with the PCLinuxOnline Web site.

In 2003, Texstar created a fork of Mandrake Linux 9.2 (which was released in October 2003). Working closely with The LiveCD Project, Texstar has since developed that fork independently into a full-fledged distribution. The initial releases were successively numbered as "previews" i.e. p5, p7, p8 up to p81a, then p9, p91, p92.

More recently, MiniME 0.93 was released on May 16 2006 as a minimal "Live & Install" CD. MiniME was designed for a small and fast installation, allowing users to customize their system by choosing all of the desired applications.

In August 2006, three new CDs/ISOs, numbered 0.93a, were released: MiniMe, Junior and Big Daddy. At the same time, the original packages that make up KDE have been split into smaller ones, while some less essential portions of KDE have been omitted on the CD. As a result, Texstar was able to fit the larger OpenOffice package into the BigDaddy release. As a side effect of this more refined "splitting", KDE runs a little more quickly with a smaller footprint. MiniMe remains a minimal install for experienced users wishing to add their own selection of packages, while Junior adds a few essential desktop-oriented packages, meeting the user somewhere between the two other releases. Notable in 0.93a: a major revision of the installation script has been implemented, resulting in a faster install and more effective hardware detection.

With the advent of PCLinuxOS 2007, also known as .94, there has been an entire shift to a more modern code which will require a complete reinstall to this version, but will then continue from there to allow updates without further re-installs.

[edit] Relationship with Mandriva Linux

Beryl running on PCLinuxOS 2007

Although it retains a similar "look and feel" to Mandriva Linux, PCLinuxOS has diverged significantly. Most parts, like the kernel, GCC and KDE (the main desktop environment), have been independently packaged.

More distinguishing features include the unique PCLinuxOS Control Center or pcc, as well as carefully selected features from distributions other than Mandriva, and numerous distro-independent projects.

PCLinuxOS maintains its own software repository, available via the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and its Synaptic front-end, completely replacing Mandriva's urpmi. PCLinuxOS endeavours to maintain a fully valid upgrade path for version 1.0. This means that an installation could be continuously updated to the latest versions of packages, hence foregoing the need to re-install the entire distribution upon each successive release. In the test releases before 1.0, it has sometimes been necessary to perform a reinstallation.

Other differences include its own menu arrangement and custom graphics and icon sets.

PCLinuxOS places specific emphasis on desktop computing, concentrating its efforts for home or small business environments, hence paying less attention to other more "traditional" uses, like servers (although packages for most server tasks are available).

[edit] Ability to Remaster

PCLinuxOS incorporates a script called mklivecd, which allows the user to take a 'snapshot' of their current hard drive installation (all settings, applications, documents, bookmarks, etc.) and compress it into an ISO CD image. This allows easy backup of a user's data and also makes it easy to create separate PCLOS-based distributions. Some such distributions include

as well as many other projects, all of these distributions use the mklivecd script to make their own live CDs or DVDs based on PCLinuxOS.

[edit] PCLinuxOS Magazine

The PCLinuxOS Magazine project is a community driven free publication focused on the users of PCLinuxOS. This online publication was started in September 2006 by a group of PCLOS users with some publication experience. All content for the publication is solicited from the PCLOS user base.

[edit] Multimedia Playback

PCLinuxOS can play back almost any type of multimedia file (wma, mp3, ogg, mpg, rm, mov, avi, etc) by default, something that many Linux distributions cannot do without further user configuration, because of proprietary issues. However, the controversial libdvdcss library for DVD playback is not installed initially, but is available in the official software repository.