PCLinuxOS, Compag & Belkin Wireless

[fos]

My daughter finally decided to install Linux on her Compaq Presario R3000 now that it is beyond its 3 year extended warranty.

She has an external Belkin USB wireless adapter that I thought would complicate things. A search on the internet suggested an ndiswrapper and the Belkin provided driver.

I decided to test the installation with livecds rather than a hard drive install. I first tried Ubuntu 7.04 since there seemed to be some success with other laptops. After several attempts with different display and acpi settings I gave up. The display would freeze up with a jerky cursor and no other image.

I also had a PCLinuxOS disk handy. I loaded the disk starting with the default settings. It worked right off the bat. It configured the display and the audio, and then asked if it should set up networking. Selecting that option pulled up the Belkin USB fob as an available option., a couple of default menu selections later and the laptop was fully functional.

I have to say that PCLinuxOS is easier to set up than any other distro I have ever tried. The standard software is limited to internet and standard office productivity. The software available from their repository is rather modest but it is not terribly difficult to install other via the RPM versions.

Another plus for the linux world!

fos....

[Sergio1704]

Hi fos

I have been a great promoter of PCLinuxOS.
When I installed 2009.1 I was really impressed.
I haven't had much of a chance to try 2009.2, because I sent my desktop for repairs several weeks ago, and I don't like trying too many OSes on my laptop.
I found the number of packages available via synaptic quite adequate when I wrote a review in March: 8945. Of course it isn't Debian, but you find codecs and similar either installed or available from the repos, no editing of sources.list needed.
As you rightly said, one of the easiest distros to set up and use, kudos to Texstar.

[Sergio1704]

I just installed 2009.2
The number of available packages has grown to 10096.
However I have come across a few problems with my hardware, a Samsung R700 notebook.
The LiveCD doesn't boot with the default option. Workaround: I chose the second option, sata probe.
After install, at first boot the system got stuck on "resetting xorg" (or something like that).
Workaround: start in safe mode.
An apt-get dist-upgrade can't be completed, 2 packages are missing. No workaround yet, either than ignoring them.

Edit: dist-upgrade issue solved by adding more mirrors.
Total packages now available: 10192

[jml]

I also like PCLinuxOS. Seems to just run on anything I put it on. Support for restricted codecs is also quite good. The only problem I ever encountered with it was a relatively limited number of applications in the repository. If you want a Debian based distro, (with the increased number of packages,) I have successfully used a Belkin USB wireless dongle with Ubuntu 9.04.

Joe

[Sergio1704]

The only problem I ever encountered with it was a relatively limited number of applications in the repository.


It has 11726 applications right now. Considering that dependencies are quite often included in a single package, it is quite a lot, IMHO :)

[Leon]

I use a current Knoppix DVD whenever I inaugurate a new system.

It is informative to note during the boot display what hardware is detected and the driver that is selected.