PCLinuxOS
Gave the wife a new Acer laptop with Windows-7 for Christmas, so now I get to play with her old Toshiba A100 with the battery that lasts about 5 minuets. I left it sit on a shelf for about a month until she was sure she had everything she wanted from it. Then I wiped XP from the hard drive and split it up into 4 partitions, a small boot partition, swap, and 2 partitions of approximately 39G each.
First I tried to install VectorLinux-6.0 too one of the 39G partitions. Vector is a light weight distro so I thought it would be good for this tired old laptop. But apparently VectorLinux doesn't like the hardware, after trying several tricks I did finally get it to install, but then I could not get it to boot. I was very disappointed, I like VectorLinux a lot and really wanted to put it on this laptop.
So plan B. I've been hearing good things about PCLinuxOS so I decided to try it. PCLinuxOS is a light weight linux distro based on Mandriva that is distributed as a LiveCD. There are different versions using Gnome, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, or the E-17 desktop. I've always been a Gnome fan, but decided to go for something different and downloaded the KDE version. The liveCD booted and ran with no problems at all, although a little slow which seams to be normal for a LiveCD. so I installed it too the other 39G partition.
Installation was easy enough, just boot the live CD and you will find an icon on the desktop to start the installation. If you are familiar with Linux installations it's a snap. If you are not then I would suggest that you do some reading on the subject before you start. I already had the hard drive partitioned with VectorLinux so I cant tell you anything about the PCLinuxOS partitioning tools.
The first thing that really impressed me after the initial reboot was the fact that a dialog box popped up asking for the wireless network pass word for my home network, and then after that wireless just works! Maybe I'm just slow, but there is something about Linux wireless that I just don't get, or maybe it's my hardware. But I always have problems with wireless in every Linux distro I have tried. I just expected that I would need to use an ethernet cable for networking this laptop, so I am thrilled that the wireless works perfectly with no fuss at all.
Software installation is handled with the Advanced Packaging Tool (or APT) package management system, originally from the Debian distribution. The Synaptic GUI front end to APT makes for easy software installation and updates. PCLinuxOS has thousands of rpm software packages available in their software repository, which APT is preconfigure to use.
Overall I am very impressed with PCLinuxOS. It is a clean lightweight user friendly os that runs well on older hardware. Every thing works, there are plenty of installed programs and many more that can be easily installed from the software repositorys. I would even recommend this os for someone who is new to Linux because it is so user friendly.
The PCLinuxOS distribution was founded October 24, 2003 by Texstar and headquarters are located in Houston, TX USA.
Check out the PCLinuxOS Homepage.