Fedora 18 Can we ever be totally free

Introduction

For the past week I have been playing with Fedora 18. 

Fedora 18 only contains free software. You do not get MP3 codecs or an Adobe Flash Plug-in. What you do get is free alternatives.

The question that I wanted answered is "Can we ever be totally free?"

Installation

I have read other reviews of Fedora on other blogs and the consensus of opinion is that the installer is not the best.

I however do not think it is as bad as some other people would have you believe.

You can download Fedora from http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora.

To create a bootable USB drive I actually used the version I put on a dual boot pen drive a few weeks ago whilst creating the article for "Installing and booting 2 or more Linux based operating systems on a pen drive".

Generally though I would have used Unetbootin.

When you boot into the live Fedora image you are presented with the screen above. You can continue using the live system or install the system. Before installing the system I check for basic problems that I may have later on such as connecting to the internet or graphics card issues.

The live system worked well enough for me to start the install. I am not going to go through the entire install process here as this is a review not an installation guide.

That is the thing though. If you want to install Fedora there are installation guides available:-

• http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installation_Guide/
• http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2013/fedora-18-install-guide/

If you prefer a visual aid then there are YouTube Videos that show you how to install it.

This video shows you how to install Fedora within a virtual environment.

 This video shows you how to dual boot Fedora




The installer isn't as crisp as the Ubuntu installer but if you read the documentation and/or follow the examples other people have kindly left then it is quite a simple process.

I think the biggest problem people have when moving to Linux is the partitioning. Once you have mastered partitioning the rest is actually very simple.

The main problem for Windows users coming to Linux is that Windows doesn't care whether you have other operating systems or not. It wants to be the one and only operating system and so it will try and eat all resources available.

Linux is much more accommodating but to be accommodating it has to know where to put things so as not to overwrite what you already have.

Some Linux distributions try and make it easy for you. (Ubuntu for example). They give you options such as replace entire operating system or install alongside existing operating system. Whilst at the beginning this sounds great it actually takes the control away from you.

For instance when installing alongside Windows, Ubuntu will take the rest of the disk and create its own partitions. Now all your programs and documents will live in the same partition.

Fedora, Debian and other Linux operating systems give as much help as possible to guide you through partitioning but they really leave the control in your own hands. The documentation is there to help you with suggested configurations but at the end of the day it is your choice how to partition.

With the exception of partitioning the rest of the install is just as easy in Fedora as it is in any other Linux distribution.

First Impressions

Fedora runs off Kernel 3.6 and Gnome 3.6.

I am going to go against general opinion here and say I really like Gnome 3. I actually prefer Gnome to KDE and Unity.

KDE is great if you like widgets and you like stuff on your desktop. It is basically really for people who like to customise their experience.

Unity and Gnome are the opposite. Whilst you can do basic things like changing the desktop wallpaper, the rest of the desktop is fairly static.

The reason I prefer Gnome is that Unity has that bar down the left hand side which takes up real estate. Gnome provides a really clean desktop.

With Gnome you have a bar across the top. On the left is an activities menu and then a clock in the centre and on the right system icons for accessibility, sound, networking, battery and then user options.

You can pull up the activities menu by clicking with the mouse or by pressing the "Super" key which unfortunately on most computers still looks like a Windows icon.

The picture above shows you what you will see when you bring up the activities menu. You can now either click on an icon on the favourites bar which is down the left hand side or start typing. In the screenshot above I started typing "screenshot" and the relevant applications were shown on the screen.

On the right hand side of the screen is a list of open applications.

People have various issues with the way Gnome 3 works such as for instance the lack of a minimise and maximise button on the screen. The reason for no minimise button is that when you minimise the program normally goes into the taskbar but in Gnome it doesn't. The only program in the taskbar at the top is the currently active program. If you minimise a program the only way to get it back is to alt-tab into it or to open the Activities menu and choose the application on the right hand side of the screen. This means minimise isn't really minimising, it is hiding.

Personally I find Gnome very intuitive and easy to use. For a quick cheat sheet visit https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet. It takes a little while for people who use traditional desktops to get up to speed but after a while you will find it second nature and it really works very very well.

Changing the desktop wallpaper

To change the desktop wallpaper click the "super" key and start typing "desktop". An option will appear for background which when clicked will enable you to choose from a set of stock photos.

There is quite a nice set of wallpapers available but I always like to go for one I find on the internet. An alternative way to set wallpaper is to find the image you like online, download it to a folder and then open the file in shotwell. You can then choose to set the image as the desktop background.

Connecting to the internet

Fedora like all modern Linux distributions makes it easy to connect to the internet. Just click the network icon in the top right hand corner and a list of wireless devices is available.

Both my home broadband and mobile broadband networks were found straight away. All I had to do was click on the network and enter the security key and I was connected to the internet.

Flash and MP3

Fedora is all about freedom and neither Flash nor MP3s fall into that category.

So what are the options? Well I normally in these occasions go searching for the quick fix of going to Google and searching for the answer.

As this is Fedora however I wanted to investigate the free options on offer to see if we can truly work without proprietary software.

Firstly there is the Flash issue. If you look in the Package Manager there is an option for Gnash, which is an open source Flash player. Gnash includes a FireFox add-in which is handy because the default browser in Fedora is FireFox.

I decided to try Gnash out and to see if it worked I went to Youtube and unfortunately the image below says it all.

I didn't have much success. None of the videos would play. I therefore decided to try another Flash site called Miniclip which has online Flash games to see if the problem was isolated to Youtube. Unfortunately none of the games could be played.

I read the Fedora documentation at this point (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash).

With regards to Youtube, the Fedora documentation makes the suggestion to sign up for WebM support and after doing this I was able to watch a good selection of Videos. Not all of them worked but the majority did.

I could not find a way to get the games on Miniclip to play. I therefore bit the bullet and installed Flash.

The truth is HTML 5 will take over at some point and the reliance on Flash will become less and less but Flash will be around for quite some time yet. I have tried Gnash more than once in the past and it doesn't seem to improve. (Unless I am doing something wrong).

At the moment Flash is still one of those things that is used often enough on websites to make it a necessity.

Moving on to MP3s. Now the free compressed music format is OGG Vorbis.

In order to realistically use OGG Vorbis regularly I need a few things. Firstly I need my personal music device to be able to support OGG. Now whilst my current player doesn't support OGG there are a good selection of players available that do.

OGG players are available in most good electrical retailers and a few bad ones as well. 

The next thing I need is to be able to get the music from my CD collection into OGG format. That is easily done as there are a number of converters available.

I also have a lot of music files already in MP3 format. Now here is a weird thing. You can convert from MP3 which is a compressed format to OGG which is also a compressed format with minimal if no degradation in quality. Again there are an abundance of tools for this job.

The final thing I would need to switch to OGG forever is an online store that sells music in OGG format. Now I have had quite a search online and there are no major online music stores providing music in OGG format. 

For me that is a problem. If you can't buy music in OGG format then you would have to buy it in MP3 format. If you buy it in MP3 format and you need a converter to convert to OGG then you are using proprietary codecs to perform the conversion. 

I have come to the conclusion that I may as well stick with MP3 format. If there was a music store for OGG format music or FLAC then I would be more than happy to ditch MP3 as well as it would save the GStreamer plug-in issues that are encountered in certain distributions.

Fedora has documentation about how to get MP3s working and so I followed that guide and I was able to listen to MP3s. (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/MP3)

Applications

Fedora comes with the following applications:

Games

• Aisleriot solitaire
• Freecell solitaire

Graphics

• Document viewer
• Image viewer
• Shotwell
• LibreOffice Draw

Internet

• Boxes - Virtual Machines
• Firefox - Web Browser
• Empathy - Mail Client
• Remote Desktop 
• Transmission - BitTorrent

Office

• LibreOffice

Sound/Video

• Cheese - Webcam
• Brasero - Disk burning
• Rhythmbox - Audio
• Videos - Video player

There are a host of accessories and system tools available as well.

Installing applications

To install applications in Fedora you can use the graphic packagekit. Simply press the "Super" key and start typing "software".

The graphical tool is nicely laid out. On the left hand side there is a list of categories and on the right hand side a list of applications that fall into the category. There is a search box as well which enables you to search by name or keyword.

You can check all the boxes of all the items that you wish to install and then click apply. This will then find all the dependencies for the applications you wish to install.

I had a small problem the very first time I ran this tool in that it constantly said "Queueing" and wouldn't find any applications. The only way to solve this was to open a terminal and look for processes containing "packagekit". I then killed the rogue process and the problem was solved and it has never come back.

The alternative to using the graphical tool is using Yum. Here is a basic cheat sheet (http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/YumCommands).

Yum is to Fedora what Apt is to Debian.

So what is in the repositories? Google Chrome isn't in the repository. You can go to the Google website and download Chrome but when I did that I received the following error:

Again I decided to refer to the Fedora documentation (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium). This gives concise instructions on how to install Chromium.

If you really want to make your life easier in Fedora then visit this link http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration/ as it gives you the options required to get non-free software into Fedora.

What is new in Fedora 18?

If you are coming from Fedora 17 then you should perhaps read the release notes before upgrading. http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_Notes/

Summary

Ideally I would like to follow the Fedora concept and live in a "Free" world but realistically I don't think that is going to happen any time soon.

Fedora is a really nice distribution. 

Criticisms of the installer are a little over the top. Just read the documentation, read other people's guides, watch a Youtube video. 

The Gnome desktop also takes a lot of unwarranted criticism. It is a modern desktop for a modern way of computing. I think for a lot of users who just want to work without tinkering with configuring the desktop it is very intuitive and I can navigate to any application or window with one or two keystrokes. 

Fedora is a crisp distribution. It feels very much a polished distribution in the same way that Ubuntu or Mint is and the only issue really is the lack of non-free software.

It is relatively easy to get around the non-free software issue by visiting the RPMFusion page and following the instructions.

I had a couple of errors early on but they went away and have never returned. 

Thank you for reading.

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The Everyday Linux User interview

I was asked a few weeks ago to answer a few questions as part of an interview for the site MyLinuxRig.com.

The questions were as follows:

1. Who are you, and what do you do?
2. What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?
3. What software do you depend upon with this distribution?
4. What kind of hardware do you run it on?
5. What is your ideal Linux setup?
6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

To find out the responses to these questions visit: 

http://www.mylinuxrig.com/post/49681374629/the-linux-setup-gary-newell-everydaylinuxuser-com

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Which Linux Distribution would you save? The Results

Introduction

Last week I started a poll.

There was one simple question:

Imagine that tomorrow the world decided there can only be a limited number of distributions. Which distributions would you save?

 The poll's reception was mixed.

At first the people at Reddit thought it was a dumb idea and the topic got voted down. It then picked up and 13 people commented on the concept.

The people at Linux Today warmed to the idea and the votes came flooding in.

In the end the article itself received 6090 pageviews and 44 comments.

The Results

Bizarrely despite there being so many pageviews there were only 362 votes cast.

The graph above tells you everything you need to know. Debian came out clearly on top followed by the usual suspects of Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, Fedora and openSUSE.

The people who use Luninux, Snowlinux and Rosa were far too cool to vote on such a silly subject and decided to keep away from such a bizarre concept.

But what about my distribution?

A common theme in the comments was the question "What about Distribution X?", "Where is Distribution Y".

Well I could have listed all 300+ distributions on Distrowatch but the graph above would then look even sillier than it already does.

Instead I am going to give an honourable mention to the distributions I left out in the poll right here, right now.

• ElementaryOS
• Scientific 
• PisiLinux
• Slitaz
• Linux From Scratch

What can we learn from these results?

What can we learn from the results of this poll? I would say not a lot.

There are various reasons for this. 

The first reason is the number of votes cast. The proportion of people voting is obviously a very small subset of the Linux community.

It also has to be concluded that the bigger distributions received the highest number of votes. This was always going to be the case because they already have a larger user base and people tend to vote for the distributions they actually like as well as the ones that are actually most important.

I think the comments actually provide far more information than the poll results themselves. The conversation that generated from the poll was very good.

It didn't start that well as the first comment received was:

Who would vote against a particular distro, using another? And why should he or she do so? So you get a nice picture about how many users distros have but nothing more.
Furthermore not all are just forks. Some have a specific purpose but for only a few people.

It is a fair point. Why should people vote? Well to be honest I started the poll as a bit of fun and out of interest to see the response that I would get and how the votes would be cast.

The follow comment was interesting because the person who made it interpreted the question to be "which is your favourite distro?"

The whole idea of "better" is entirely subjective. Better for desktops? Better for servers? Better for commercial software support? Better because I said so and I've been using Linux longer than some of you have been alive? Every distro out there was created to "better" meet the needs of someone.

In equal measures came comments from both sides of the argument that I initially laid out when starting the poll.

Some people say though that it would be better if some of the smaller distro creators concentrated on contributing to their upstream project.
You can argue for both camps in this debate. If there isn't a distro doing what you do and it is worthwhile then there is merit to your work. On the flip side if more people worked on the upstream projects they may be even better than they already are.

The text in blue was written by me at the top of the poll.

The following comments suggest that more is better:

I would rather have as many distros as possible than a limited amount. Some people complain about one and enjoy another, I love 'em ALL! Even the ones I don't use have something to contribute! 

The idea of spins, to me, is great. I mean, that's how Linux Mint got started, and what a distro that is! Fedora, for instance, doesn't really care about making life easy for the home desktop user. Enter Korora. It blends some things from Ubuntu and uses the KDE and Gnome desktops to make a nice Fedora experience. 

I voted for all the ones I know and have used, because they helped me along the way to what I know now, I'm glad there are so many distros around, many are for specific needs, to "scratch a developers itch" as they say.

In more than equal measure came the following responses:

Just too many distro..! If Linux would want to replace iOS or M$, then we need to combine all the effort..

Exactly!The rest of distro there are ... just parasites over these.Although they bring little added value, they cannot survive alone without the hosts they parasite upon.

There were a few very insightful comments such as:

Presumably, people start these spins because the upstream distribution is not interested in the changes they want to make.
Given that,it's pretty unlikely that the upstream distro is going to welcome the same changes in the form of a so-called contribution.

I think the above point is right. If you use a particular distribution and every time there is a new release you have to do certain things to get it back to the way you like it and then you suggest to the distro developers that they add in your changes but it doesn't materialise then there is a justification for creating your own distribution.

How many people do you need to use your distribution to make it a success? The answer: One. Just you. If you can justify the time and effort to spin your distribution even if it is just a re-spin and it works for you and does everything you require from it then you have justified your time and effort.  You have also probably learned quite a bit along the way.

One needs a vast knowledge of the Linux world to answer correctly this question. I have no idea about 80% of the distro listed above. Should I *not* save them? May be they have full of merits and actually I would be happy with one of these?

This is why blogs like this exist. I don't just review the big distributions. I review the smaller ones as well which brings me to the next comment:

I'd love to see in your list some of the FREE distros from the list that FSF post in http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html.

April was certainly a month where I targeted reviews of bigger distributions such as OpenSUSE, Debian and PCLinuxOS.

May will be the month for reviewing smaller distributions and I have already lined up reviews of Emmabuntus, Mozillux, SolyDXK and Linux Royal.

Before I finish I'd like to comment on a few of the other comments. Firstly there is the scientific response suggesting that if I had put the items in a different order then the results would have been different.

I'm guessing that if you displayed the choices randomized differently for each voter the results would differ.As is, I'll bet that the choices listed near the top are favored.

An interesting point. If you took the Distrowatch rankings and instead of ordering them by downloads you ordered them alphabetically then would people use a different spread of distributions? I think there would be certain people that would take the pin on the paper approach (The same way that I pick horses at the bookies). I think what would really happen is that people would use Google, Reddit and other distro ratings sites to find out which distributions are most popular. In truth if you go to Reddit on any given day there are people constantly asking which distribution to use.

The other question that came up more than once was "Where is Linux From Scratch?" Whilst I have included this in the honourable mentions above I thought I would comment further. I don't really see Linux From Scratch as a full distribution. It is more a guide showing how to build your own Linux system. In a similar way when I buy flat packed furniture from Argos I don't see for example a wardrobe. I see lots of pieces of wood, screws, tacks, drawer runners and wood glue. Along with that I get instructions of how to build the actual wardrobe.

And my favourite comment.....

I may just build a bigger Ark

I would like to thank everyone who contributed into making this poll a success. I hope you enjoyed reading this short review of the results.

So what happens next.... well clearly we now need to strip it down to just 5 distributions and they are Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Arch and Fedora.

I voted against Ubuntu. It's actually not necessary in 2013 

Oh well maybe we won't then. Maybe we will just keep things the way they are. In truth the world has a happy knack of sorting itself out and the best keep on going and those that become redundant disappear into the mists of time.

For those waiting for something more substantial from this blog, check back next week as I am currently running the new version of Fedora and so there will be a review for that and I am trying something out on the Raspberry PI that I need to write up.

Thank you all for reading

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Linux Podcasts and Magazines

Introduction

Whilst there are a host of great blogs out there reviewing distributions and providing key how-to articles there are times when you just don't have time to read, yet you may still need that Linux fix.

When I'm driving long distances or whilst programming I need to plug myself in and block out the outside world. 

A lot of programmers block out the outside world by listening to music but I find I get bored of listening to music. When driving I listen to the radio rather than listen to CDs and when I am programming I listen to podcasts.

This article highlights my favourite Linux based shows that I like to listen to and also highlights a couple of good free magazines available for download.

The Linux Action Show

The Linux Action Show is hosted by Chris Fisher and Matt Hartley. It features news and reviews and guest interviews.

Technically not a podcast but more an online television show. The show is very entertaining and it is quite cleverly put together so that the hosts can appear in the bottom right hand corner leaving the rest of the screen for showing the display on the laptops they are using.

The show has a few sponsors and so some of the show is given over very enthusiastically to showing the best bits of the sites and services being advertised.

The two hosts have the knack of keeping you interested and are knowledgeable about the subjects they are talking about.

In the recent episode that I have just watched the guys were reviewing Ubuntu 13.04. They don't appear to have any agenda and the review was largely positive especially when it came to improved performance. On the other hand they weren't blown away with excitement about it.

Personally, looking at the examples they displayed it would tempt me to have another look at Ubuntu because it did look very crisp. I always do that though and then a few days later think "why did I do that?" and end up back at Linux Mint.

In the same episode of the show there was a guest interview with the creator of Descent OS. It is good to see the faces behind the distributions and it is interesting to understand the motivation behind a distribution.

To Watch the Linux Action Show visit http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/tag/linux-action-show/

PCLinuxOS Magazine

Up until recently I hadn't tried PCLinuxOS but I have been reading this magazine for years. To be honest it doesn't really matter which version of Linux you are running as most of the articles are relevant to all distributions.

The format of the magazine is varied, with tutorials, screenshot showcases, poetry, spot the difference and of course reviews.

A lot of the online blogs write about the different operating systems and tend to gloss over the actual applications and this is something I am guilty of myself.

The PCLInuxOS magazine reviews the actual software that makes up the repositories and so there are plenties of articles about LibreOffice and GIMP etc.

Whether you intend to use PCLinuxOS or not this is a very good read.

Read the Everyday Linux User review of PCLinuxOS: http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2013/04/is-there-easier-transition-to-linux.html

To get the latest PCLinuxOS magazine visit: http://pclosmag.com/index.html

(Available in HTML, PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats).

Going Linux

Visit http://goinglinux.com/

The Going Linux podcast is hosted by Larry Bushey and Bill Smith (Chief Executive Minion). 

It is fairly similar to the Linux Action Show content wise but with less emphasis on the adverts. The show has a mix of news, reviews and a good bit of technical stuff thrown in.

I listen to this when I am on the train. 

The Linux Link Tech Show

So what has a lot of chatting and very little of it actually about Linux? The Linux Link Tech Show of course.

Don't let that put you off. This show lasts a good 2 hours and to be honest lasts a bit longer than that.

The show generally starts and there is general chit chat for about 15 to 20 minutes and then suddenly someone will announce "shall we start". Then you get an opening theme tune and you are back to the same sort of chit chat that happened before the music.

This podcast is great for me when I am working. I have been listening to this podcast for a while now and it is like listening to a bunch of friends I have never met.

Will you learn anything about Linux whilst listening to this show? Probably not that much. There are a few tit bits of information but mainly it is just chat.

I really enjoyed the recent episode where they looked back at all their previous shows. I'm guessing the girl who appeared on a show talking about RSI probably wouldn't agree as it was announced by one and all that she was the worst guest they had ever had. (I never heard that interview but I'm guessing it would be like someone from Alcoholics Anonymous walking into a South London pub on a Saturday afternoon whilst the football is on and suggesting that everyone calms down with their drinking).

This is my favourite podcast.

To listen to The Linux Link Tech Show visit http://tllts.org/

Full Circle Magazine

Full Circle magazine is to Ubuntu what PCLinuxOS Magazine is to PCLinuxOS.

The magazine features news articles about Ubuntu and derivatives of Ubuntu. It also contains programming tutorials and how-tos.

There are also letters pages and a question and answers column.

In this month's edtion there is a review of  SolydXK and how-to guides for LibreOffice.

The magazine also contains book reviews, games reviews and software reviews.

I don't find it quite as endearing as PCLinuxOS magazine but I still read it every month.

To read Full Circle Magazine visit http://fullcirclemagazine.org/

Ubuntu UK Podcast

This podcast is very British. 

It is another one of those podcasts I can just put on and listen to and get on with my work. The show is almost like a radio show in the way it is presented but there is a good element of feeling that it is just a few people in a room chatting.

Today I listened to episode 9 where there were important discussions about the direction of the Ubuntu Swirl.

I listen to this show more for entertainment value than to learn anything because generally I don't use Ubuntu and because also the show features mainly news features and short snippets rather than how-to guides.

To listen to the Ubuntu UK Podcast visit http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/

Summary

I like listening to podcasts. They help me to zone in to what I am supposed to be doing in a way music just doesn't seem to work.

There are hundreds of podcasts out there and as I come across some more I will share them with you.

Thank you for reading.

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Which distros would you save?

Introduction

One of the comments that is quite often made on Reddit and in other Linux forums is that there are a lot of distributions that are just re-spins of Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE etc.

Diversity is great and it is good that people put the effort in to creating a distribution.

Some people say though that it would be better if some of the smaller distro creators concentrated on contributing to their upstream project.

You can argue for both camps in this debate. If there isn't a distro doing what you do and it is worthwhile then there is merit to your work. On the flip side if more people worked on the upstream projects they may be even better than they already are.

So the point of this post is to run a little poll and it is just for fun.

Imagine that tomorrow the world decided there can only be a limited number of distributions. Which distributions would you save?

The Poll

Please place a checkbox in all the distributions you would save. Sorry if your distribution isn't listed already. I had to stop somewhere.

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The best screenshots of Everyday Linux User all in one place

Introduction

One of my favourite things about blogging about Linux is the artwork that I find whilst trying out different distributions.

Sometimes the images in the blog posts are commented about after the article by readers of the blog.

I therefore decided to create a Pinterest page which shares my favourite images. 

I would like to clarify that the desktop images that I use aren't always taken from the distributions themselves. The wallpapers come from various sources on the internet and sometimes they are photos taken with my own digital camera.

I hope you enjoy viewing them. I have included some of my favourite images within this post.

Pinterest Page

To see the Everyday Linux User Pinterest page visit:

 http://pinterest.com/everydaylinux/everyday-linux-user/

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Is there an easier transition to Linux from Windows than PCLinuxOS?

Introduction

In the past couple of weeks I have taken a look at two of the more popular Linux operating systems.

Last week I tackled Debian and before that I tackled openSUSE.

This week I am looking at one of the more user friendly operating systems and one a Windows user looking to move to Linux for the first time.might want to try.

PCLinuxOS is aimed at a similar audience to Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Zorin but unlike those operating systems PCLinuxOS is not based on Debian.

So without further ado lets get started.

Installation

You can download PCLinuxOS from this link:
 http://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=10.

I chose the KDE 32 bit desktop version. The machine I chose to install PCLinuxOS on is the Samsung R20. (The same machine that I had previously installed openSUSE and Debian).

I installed the live KDE version to a USB drive using UNetbootin and rebooted the computer.

The PCLinuxOS installer (Drak) is one of the best I've used. From start to finish the install took about 10 minutes.

The first part of the installer deals with partitioning your drive. You can choose to use the entire disk, use existing partitions or choose a custom partition setup..
 

Depending on which partitioning option you chose a few extra screens appear asking about the partition setup and then the installer creates the partitions and then starts copying the files.

When the files have finished copying you are then asked to choose the boot loader.

That is it. You are then asked to reboot the machine and you are ready to go.

Well actually not quite. When you reboot you are then asked the rest of the necessary questions such as keyboard layout, timezone and user details.

A nice touch though is that when I first boot into PCLinuxOS it has remembered my wireless connection from when I entered it into the live session saving me from having to enter the password again.

When you first log in you are shown a message stating that your system needs to be updated.

I followed the instructions and 128mb of updates were installed which is not unreasonable.

First Impressions

When you first log in to PCLinuxOS you are presented with a screen that to Windows users may seem quite familiar.

There is a taskbar at the bottom and just a couple of icons on the desktop.

The taskbar contains a menu icon, a series of quick launch icons and in the bottom right a system tray with system icons and a clock.

From left to right you have the icons which brings up the menu, show the desktop, configure your desktop, configure your computer, a file manager and virtual desktops. (You may notice in the screen above that there is a FireFox icon as well but that is because FireFox happened to be running at the time the image was taken).

In the system tray the icons are for network settings, klipper (a clipboard tool), sound, (then there is a little arrow which when expanded gives options for)  desktop notifier, kwallet, korganiser and notifications. Finally of course there is the clock.

The two desktop icons are to show the home folder and the trash icon to show the recycled files.

If you click the PC button (which for a Windows user is where the Windows start button is) then a menu appears.

I find this menu to be a bit underwhelming and chaotic. There are simply too many categories and no search feature.

KDE has a better menu system than this and you can turn it on by right clicking the PC icon. Now select the switch to "Application Launcher Style".

The application launcher style menu is much nicer for navigating and it has the search feature.

Simply type a keyword or a program name and the chosen item is likely to appear.

The layout of this menu is much nicer as well. 

You have the favourites tab which should contain the applications you use most and is fully customisable.

There is the applications tab which provides a list of categories and then applications within the category.

The computer tab provides access to important folders.

The recently used tab shows your most recently accessed applications, files and folders and last but not least the leave button gives you options for closing down the computer.

Customising the desktop

If you are a Windows user looking to move to Linux then you should consider that PCLinuxOS as a real step up.

Not only does it perform better than Windows it is fully customisable as well. Sure at first the desktop looks exactly the same but I am sure that is just to make everyone feel at home. We have grown up all our lives with Windows so showing people a Windows style desktop isn't a bad way to go.

Customising the desktop is made easy in PCLinuxOS. To be honest everything is made easy in PCLinuxOS.

Lets start with changing the most basic thing, the desktop background. 

Right click anywhere on the desktop and click the item that says "Folder View Settings". Now that name may not sound as nice as "Change desktop background" but there is a reason for the menu item name that I will come to later.

PCLinuxOS comes with a nice selection of default stock wallpapers but you can add your own by clicking "open" and then navigating to the path to an image file you saved onto the computer. When you have chosen the image you wish to use click "Apply".

As you can see you can brighten PCLinuxOS up with a few simple clicks.

Other things you can change in the folder view settings are the mouse actions and also if you choose the location option you can choose the icons that appear on the desktop.

Now for your main desktop you might wish to leave it as is or you may wish to add a few widgets.

You can add widgets by right clicking on the desktop. Now select "Add Widgets". There are a whole host of widgets available. 

One of the best widgets is the shelf. (Doesn't sound very exciting does it). Adding a shelf enables you to group all your folder icons into one place. It makes it possible to group your icons and move them around your desktop en block.

Now my example above isn't the greatest but I have chosen to add the places icons into the shelf. You can put anything in there. You can add pictures, movies, music etc.

Other widgets include calendars, the weather forecast, RSS feeds, CPU monitors etc. 

Now everything you have seen thus far you can actually do in Windows (even Vista had these options). Windows however doesn't have the option of multiple desktops. The last icon in the quick launch bar gives you the option to switch desktops.

Each desktop can have a different desktop background and different widgets on it.As well as that each desktop can have a different activity. Remember earlier when I mentioned "Folder View Settings". Well if you click in the top right hand corner then a new menu appears and one of the menu options is "Activities".

Each activity can give you a different way of viewing things. For example as well as the folder view there is the search view or the grouping view or the newspaper view. 

There are a whole host of other options for configuring your desktop.

Simply click the configure your desktop icon in the quick launch bar (spanner and screwdriver)..

You can add desktop effects, configure desktop search, change screen resolution, change the locale and window appearances.

The systems settings screen that loads lets you configure other things as well such as network settings, bluetooth, printer configurations, the login screen and many other settings.

If you want to configure more serious options such  as adding users to your system, setting up a firewall, creating an FTP server etc then you can click the "configure your computer" icon on the quick launch bar which is a little spanner icon in a circle. To run this feature you need to be able to enter the root (administrator) password you created when you first installed PCLinuxOS.

Connecting to the internet

If you setup the internet whilst running the live session of PCLinuxOS then the connection will be remembered when you install the system which means you are automatically connected.

Obviously you may move around and so the wireless connection will be different from place to place. To change the wireless connection click the network icon in the system tray.

The network card on my PC was picked up straight away in the live session and carried across to the installed version.


Clicking the network icon brings up a screen similar to the one displayed and as you can see I have two networks available to me.

If I click the other network than the one I am connected to it asks for my security key and after entering the key KWallet appears asking whether I want to use it to keep my passwords safe.

Flash and MP3

PCLinuxOS is impressive on most fronts and I wasn't at all surprised to find out that Flash and MP3s were able to play straight away.

What is also impressive is that the default music player is Clementine which is a top music application.

Applications

Bearing in mind that I used the live disk to install PCLinuxOS there is an impressive amount of applications installed by default. 

The following table provides a list of some of the applications installed.

Video Imagination - DVD Slideshow Maker VLC Media Player - Media Player Kamerka - Webcam application TV Time - Television Viewer K9 Copy - DVD backup Dragon Player - Video Player	Sound KSCD - CD Player Clementine - Audio Player Juk - Music Player	Office LibreOffice Writer LibreOffice Calc LibreOffice Database LibreOffice Impress Okular - Document Viewer Calibre - Ebook library Management KOrganiser - Personal Organiser KCalc - Scientific Calculator
Internet KTorrent - Bittorrent Client Krfb - Desktop Sharing KGet - Download Manager Dropbox - Online File Hosting Thunderbird - Email Client Filezilla - FTP Client Kopete - Instant Messenger KFlickr - Photo Management KGmail - Gmail Notifier Choqok - Microblogging Client KRDC - Remote Desktop Client Skype - Video Calling UMTSMon - Control 3G Devices FireFox - Web Browser	Graphics DNG Image Converter GIMP - Image Editing ImageMagick - Image Editing KColour - Paint Digikam - Photo Management Inkscape - Vector Graphics	Games KBreakout - Arkanoid Bovo - 5 in a row Gnugo - Chess style game Kigo - Go KMahjongg - Mahjongg Kiriki - Yahtzee LSKat - Card Game KPatience - Patience PySolFC - Card Game KSudoku - Sudoku KMines - Minesweeper Naval Battle - Ship Sinking Game KAtomic - Logic Game KHangMan - Hangman
File Tools Dolphin - File Manager Konqueror - File Manager Midnight Commander - File Manager (Various Other Tools not listed)	Editing KWrite - Text Editor	More Applications Ark - Archiving tool K3B - Disk burning Nepomuk - Backup Q7Z - 7Zip KWallet Samba UNetbootin (and loads more tools)

Installing Applications

The application used to install applications is Synaptic.

If you happen to have used Debian or Ubuntu based distributions you will have come across this application many times.

Synaptic provides a good interface for searching for the applications that you want to install..

For example my favourite browser is Chromium but by default only FireFox is installed. 

(Oddly enough searching for Chromium comes up blank (even with other repositories selected). However searching for Chrome comes back with the option for installing Google Chrome.)

The PCLinuxOS Magazine

Every month there is a magazine released for PCLinuxOS. I have enjoyed reading this magazine for a while even though this is the first time I have used PCLinuxOS.

I would recommend reading the edition for January 2013 if you are installing PCLinuxOS for the first time as it provides a really good tutorial on how to install PCLinuxOS from scratch.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/?p=1783

Summary

PCLinuxOS is a really good distribution especially for newcomers to Linux. If you are really fed up with Windows and have been scared off by the talk of having to enter commands into a terminal window then PCLinuxOS maybe your answer.

PCLinuxOS is one of the few distributions where the terminal application isn't immediately available and to be honest for most users it is unlikely you will ever need it.

This really is a distribution for everyday computer users who surf the web, create documents, do a bit of microblogging or online interaction via Facebook etc. It is a great alternative to Windows and a throughly professional looking operating system.

Any complaints? Not really. I'm not a fan of the classic menu that is installed by default but that was easily swapped out and I did have a KDE crash message appear although it never had any effect on the running system.

I would probably recommend that if you are going to try this out and you want the full experience that you should skip the live distribution and go straight for the full monty option.

One word to sum up PCLinuxOS. Impressive.

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