pclinuxos 09 or ubuntu
 

i just successfully installed pclinuxos 09 onto a blank hard drive and i am impressed so far (a whole month) and it has not yet given me attitude like windows has been doing lately,this os fits me very well but i also heard of some good things about ubuntu

but my thing is that i never got to try ubuntu, when i made my live cd i put it in the machine booted it up, chose to install it and it stopped in the middle of everything, after it loads the kernel and all the lettering comes up and it has [ ok ] at the end of every phrase on the right side of the screen and after all of that was finished my monitor clicked (thats normal) and the screen went black and stayed there til i finally got impatient and turned the thing off so i never got the chance to test drive ubuntu for myself but at the moment pcliuxos has been a really great os to switch to (nothing is missing, i am happy with it, of course i'll still use windows but not as often anymore, only for programs and files that cannot be opened or ran in linux)

but i want to hear it from you guys which is more content to you pclinuxos or ubuntu, and why

Personally, I'm using PCLinuxOS Gnome 2009 because I wanted to mess with an RPM based distro rather than Debian based. I too find it perfect for my purposes.

I guess Ubuntu would be the better choice if you don't mind the 6 month release cycle and particularly want apps that may not be available with PCLOS...

BTW, welcome!

Hi Baron,
You can try Ubuntu (or many other distros for that matter) at no risk to your current system. Just burn an Ubuntu live CD, boot it up and that should give you an idea of what it's like and if it suits you more than PCLinuxOS. As a general rule, if you're happy with the distro you're using then it's always nice to stick with it unless you have a compelling reason to change.

I don't agree with the claim that certain apps may not be available for PCLinuxOS. One way or another they are pretty much all available. Obviously a package-based app like aptitude or wajig wouldn't be available or useful on an RPM-based system and vice versa but beyond that I don't think there are any serious constraints. Someone, doubtless, will correct me if I'm wrong. Remember this is the linux world. Source code for apps is available.
Cheers,
jdk

thanks for the welcome jdkaye i really appreciate it

and yes pclinuxos is really suiting me and i have an extra hard drive lying around here (my father works for a cable company and he gives me the broken dvr boxes and surprisingly the hard drives still work after a little formatting and changing the jumper) anyways i do see some inconviences with pclinuxos but very few

my first is that i can't install my scanner or my printer
i have a canon canoscan fb 620u and the setup says that it is not supported (i guess it's too old, the drivers are available for windows and works just as good as a modern scanner)

i also can't install my printer (i guess i need a little update on hardware there too i have an hp deskjet 952c but i also have a lexmark 1300z lying around but i have no ink for it so whatever (i am also trying to figure out how to share this thing)

one more inconvenience is that i can't set up the wireless internet just as easily as i can do with windows (just plug in the usb wirless adapter load the drivers but in this case i don't have to provide the drivers, and go into network settings select your network and put in the WEP code but then when i enter the wep it doesn't connect (i even connected the computer hard wire, went into the routers settings found the wep copied it then went into the wireless setup pasted it and it still didn't work)

but overall it is a very great os

Linux Mint

Hi Baron,
There are answers (some good some bad ;)) for all your questions. The secret is to know how to find them. There is a great search facility on LQ and it's a good place to start. I scanned (no pun intended) for canoscan fb and here's what I found. It seems that changing distros is not the answer to this one.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...ct/514/cat/all
You can do a similar search on the LQ HCL for your other hardware related issues. There's no point in going through the hassle of changing your distro if the new one you try is not better than what you had before for these issues. I repeat my suggestion of using a live CD (I'd suggest knoppix which is super-good at detecting hardware) with your stuff plugged in a seeing what gets found and what doesn't. In any event, LQ and then Google are the way to go for solving these kinds of issues.
Good luck,
jdk

Nothing wrong with Pclos. If all your hardware is working, be happy.

Custangro mentioned Linux Mint and I have to agree it is a class act. If ubuntu will not run I doubt Mint will, seeing it is basically the same thing.

Another nice debian based distro is Mepis.

Yeah, but the issue might be a driver/hardware issue...which Mint includes a lot of 3rd party drivers "out of the box" (which Ubuntu dosen't).

I've had the issue before where Ubuntu didn't work but Mint did...dosen't hurt to try though...

-C

Your hp deskjet should install in PCLosas most HP printer will setup in linux.

what is pclinuxos based on

is it debian, gnome or kde (i think thats what it means)

plus someone told me about opensuse (i took a distro decision test just now and the second to last one it reccomended was opensuse the first being mandriva)

i downloaded the gnome version and it froze as it was loading the live desktop (haven't tried the kde version)

i am also comfortable with pclinuxos because it can run skype, and frets on fire x flawlessly but sometimes when i play fofix it freezes (when this happens in windows i just open task manager go to processes and end the frets on fire process and start it up again, if the problem persists then i restart the system and that usually does the trick)and once in a while my sound card won't work (i usually end up restarting it when this happens, but i first reset it to default settings and that usually does the trick

still overall its pretty impressive, unlike windows it hasn't done anything to make me mad yet (THIS THINGS IS SO AWSOME!!!)

It's based off of Mandriva

well i'll see if i can find other mandriva desktops since ubuntu and open suse won't install right (ubuntu was gnome i think and i tried to install both kde and gnome desktops of open suse don't know why it won't install

is pclinux os a gnome or kde desktop (i think it's kde)

so i am going to get mandriva one and see what i think i might even prefer it over pclinuxos