Review: PcLinuxOS 2008 "MiniMe" (Page 1 of 1)
Written by
Steve Lake
Posted on: Mar 19, 2008 at 01:56pm
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It's been nearly ten months since we last reviewed a PcLinuxOS release. This time around we have a brand new flavor to look at. The venerable "MiniMe" 2008 release. What's different about this version over the previous 2007 version? Let's have a look and find out..
The first thing you'll notice about this distribution is that it is relatively the same as the old 2007 version. The biggest difference comes in the fact that it not only boots faster, but you don't have to go through the morrass of screens you used to in order to get to the desktop. It's actually pretty quick from first boot to full desktop in the live CD. You only have to answer one question, which is about keyboard type, before you can complete the boot. Once on the desktop the one thing you quickly notice is the newer, black "polished metal" look. It's a somewhat "Vista'ish" look that has really become popular lately. I'm not all that much for it, but it is at least done tastefully.
Aside from a few aesthetic reservations about the interface, the rest is great. Being that the "MiniMe" release is designed to be a sub-compact version of PcLinuxOS, it's very lean in just about every way imaginable. It's still running a full version of KDE 3.5.8 that's completely untouched in the areas that count, save for a few visual improvements, so that's a relief. It bugs me to no end when groups go out of their way to hack up KDE, and then call it an improvement. It's fine the way it is in its default configuration. No "improvements" are really needed. If some work is done to actually add to KDE, then I don't mind. But most groups just end up hacking up KDE and making it a mess.
The guys at PcLinuxOS, especially Texstar don't do that. They keep things pretty pure, which is one thing I love about their work. The "MiniMe" release is further proof of this. It's a lean version of KDE designed for speed, yet they did cut out the important stuff. For example, it's still got the complete PcLinuxOS control center. I like that. The install of the complete system is pretty much kept to the standard for all PcLinuxOS that they've set in the past. The difference this time is that the install takes less than 15 minutes. I think mine took a grand total of 12 minutes counting reboots and everything. It still uses the Draklive installer, so if you've used it before, or even if you haven't, the install is very straight forward and easy to do.
Once you've rebooted and you're up on the main desktop, you'll find the same, clean, lean interface you found in the live cd version. And speaking of lean interfaces, the entire system is generally devoid of all the extras that come with a normally complete KDE install. Overall you're given a few basic items like one text editor, and a few other programs to get you started. From there you have to install everything else yourself. So on a fresh install, you can expect to be surfing through Synaptic quite a bit to add everything you want. Don't expect any major mainstream apps to be installed by default. They wanted to keep it lean, and believe me, it's lean. I can't stress that enough. It's extremely lean. No excess fluff of any kind.
So you can think of "MiniMe" 2008 as a "roll your own" setup based on PcLinuxOS. All the basics are there to help get you started, but from there you are on your own to choose how you want your system setup. This does have one huge advantage in that there's no clutter. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not one tiny bit of it. Everything is clean, lean and trim. And it shows it in how snappy and responsive the desktop is. I installed a number of applications during my testing, as I used my "MiniMe" install as a test bed for some other things I was working on. Needless to say, I was impressed with how it handled itself.
As for drivers and hardware, by default you're handed the generic open source drivers, and your network is not setup at all, so you'll need to do a little admin magic to get your network up and running and bring the whole system up to the latest full blown drivers for your video card and the like. But otherwise I really have no complaints with it. It was very good. Ok, well, I do have a few complaints, but those were mostly in the eye candy area, as mentioned before. But those are easy enough to fix and tailor to your own tastes.
For those who don't necessarily want a "Plug and Go" install that's got everything out of the box, but rather they want something that's lean and fast and they don't mind having to tweak things a bit, the 2008 "MiniMe" edition of PcLinuxOS is perfect. I've been very satisfied with it and rate it as very highly recommended for all users. New users might struggle with a few of the admin functions to get themselves going, but it's not so difficult that you can't do it. You just have to be patient enough to work through it and you'll be fine. More seasoned users should find the task of tweaking and administering their install to be a piece of cake.
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