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PCLinuxOS 2K4: Mandrake Meets The Live CD

Posted by timothy on from the and-it's-not-knoppix dept.

NoahsLinuxArk2K3 writes "For those of you who may not be familiar with PCLinuxOS, it's a Linux distro derived from Mandrake Linux 9.2, developed by none other than Texstar from PCLinuxOnline (best known for his RPM work for the same distro). The new distro is primarily a Live CD, but can also be installed to the hard drive. It is still in preview release, but at 306 hits per day, it's already #8 on the DistroWatch charts. This review is the first of its kind to surface and it is looking very promising." Update: 12/30 03:18 GMT by T : A semi-anonymous reader writes "For those who dont have a high speed connection, PCLinuxOS 2K4 Preview 4 is available from OSDisc.com for a few bucks." Probably soon it will be at cheapbytes, too.

4 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. LiveCD installers by AMystery · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why aren't there more LiveCD installers? I used Knoppix as my debian installer and it was such a good experience that given the choice I would never go back to anything else. Text based installers are powerful, but for the pure user experience, being able to boot into a full OS and surf the web and listen to music while the OS installs in the background seems like the best way. So why aren't there more such discs? Also related, is this something other geeks would want? I can see the elitism of loving debian's old isntaller, but how much worse is a LiveCD version? Is the only problem hardware support? Its easier to have a simple installer that works on everything than try to get a LiveCD to boot? Appeal to the lowest common denominator?

  2. Re:Mandrake is great anyway, live CD is even bette by cavebear42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mandrake with its superior driver support is the way to go for a live CD. I'm excited to hear that there is interest in pursuing this type of OS. My challenge with the live CD distro is that, as I understand it, its a "take it the way we make it" distro. No matter how much you like the way they made it, it just feels wrong. You should be able to build your own cd out of the Mandrake you configured. In any case, I still await the day Linux comes in a distro Grandma can use.

  3. Isn't it about time for a Live-DVD? by Rick+Richardson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to see an uncompressed Live-DVD with twice as much stuff on it as on a Live-CD. Anbody working on one of those yet?

    But in the meantime, anybody got a bit torrent for PCLinuxOS up?

    -Rick

    1. Re:Isn't it about time for a Live-DVD? by MyHair · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Try a Google search for Knoppix DVD. I'd provide a link, but I'm not sure which one to give you. It seems to be more of a grass roots effort than an official release, though. And there was a comment by Klaus in German that, with the help of babel fish, sounds like there's an issue with cloop files over 4GB in cloop versions 0.68 and earlier. So it sounds like he has in mind DVD with compression, but some of the Knoppix fans think like you and want an uncompressed DVD.