PCLinuxOS

2005-04-17
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PCLinuxOS 2007 pclos banner

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See also Linux distributions based on PCLinuxOS

(on Wikipedia)
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=PCLinuxOS
http://www.pclinuxos.com/

What was, and probably still is, an extremely beautiful and easy to use distribution. Where Slackware had long-held the title “it just works”, PCLinuxOS does that for users who are completely new to Linux.

From its earliest days its hardware detection was renown, its suite of software astounding, and its remastering capability extraordinary.

It was my daily driver for a long time.

  • Was nicknamed “pclos” for years.



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PCLinuxOS 2007 pclos banner PCLinuxOS-logo.png
Table of Contents [hide]

2015-05-15 – pclinuxos-lxde-2014.12 ∞

I can’t get this booting on a USB stick. No documentation.

  • Prepping the liveUSB with UNetbootin/Windows.
  • As I expected, the result was not bootable until I removed/re-inserted the USB stick between attempts/reboots.
  • Has some nasty characters in the bootloader.
  • Booted “Copy to RAM”

  • Mediocre textmode

ERROR: Unable to mount the livecd

       Dropping you to a limited shell
  Loading /initrd/bin/ash
/initrd/bin/ash: can't access tty; job control turned off

.. and the keyboard was frozen

  • Booted “Default”
  • GUI boot screen, with a.. bull? Is this their logo now? Animated circle around it.
  • Cannot press escape to see the boot text. No USB stick activity.
  • The keyboard seems frozen.
  • Booted “Safe boot”

  • Same error as above.

FAIL

I don’t know how to get this on a USB stick.

2015-05-14 – pclinuxos64-lxde-2014.12 ∞

  • Booted into a Lubuntu 14.04 32bit LiveUSB I had.
  • Instead of nuking/formatting, I deleted the files which were somehow still on the USB stick. It should have the proper windows-compatible formatting from some previous experimentation.

  • The result was not bootable.

With no hints as to how to get this fucking thing onto a USB stick, I’m giving this a pass.

2015-05-12 – lxde-2014.12 64bit ∞

Notes:

Trying the USB copy with Universal USB Installer (UUI) 1.9.6.0

  • PCLinuxOS is in the list of supported distributions.
  • Using a locally-downloaded slackellive-openbox-6.0.3.iso
  • UUI seems to have worked fine.
  • Looking at the drive in Windows shows files.

  • Rebooting does not work. The device isn’t even seen as bootable.

Well fuck this. If they can’t be decent enough to put the basic usb instructions and troubleshooting notes somewhere visible, they aren’t supporting this distribution.

2015-05-08 – lxde-2014.12 64bit ∞

  • Oh god, trying to download a torrent goes through a mess of terrible web pages.
  • There doesn’t seem to be any documentation at all.

  • I can’t find any instructions for making the ISO “go” on a USB stick. I guess I’ll try dd.

\sudo  \dd  pclinuxos64-lxde-2014.12.iso  of=/dev/sdb  bs=4M

.. nope. Sigh.

Ancient notes ∞

How very odd that I have no notes anywhere.

I ended up switching from PCLinuxOS to Unity Linux. I just followed others who left to do their own thing.

My detailed installation instructions for various Linux distributions must have started some time after leaving PCLinuxOS. I have no notes whatsoever for it. Maybe in very deep archives, but I won’t get to those any time soon.

2009-06-15 – PCLinuxOS 2009 ∞

(2009-06-15 and earlier)

I was brave and did a full update. It actually worked!

  • Audacious was renamed to audacious2
  • Seems to have solved issues with the previous desktop being visible as I boot back up later.

  • Solved issues with my keyboard locking up and with junk characters appearing until I ctrl-alt-f1 and back again.

Issues with XAMPP

lampp start
output 
cat: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/bin/sh: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Starting XAMPP for Linux ...
/bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/bin/bash: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
XAMPP for Linux started.

www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?action=printpage;topic=54916.0

su
nano /opt/lampp/lampp

Change line 96 from:

export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5

to:

echo "LAMPP OK"

(httpd.conf)

nano /opt/lampp/etc/httpd.conf

Find this section:

# Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) Support

add this:

LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so

Next, find the <IfModule mime_module> section (in httpd.conf) and add this line:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php5

Special:search was still acting semi-busted. More testing is needed.

2009-03-14 – PCLinuxOS 2007 ∞

Truly refreshing to work with, and hackable enough for my tastes.

  • PCLinuxOS 2009 has freezing issues on the LiveCD, so I tried 2007.
  • The console is blue. WHAT THE HECK.
  • /dev/hda had its permissions changed..
  • kdialog is FAST now. Sweet. But maybe this means the KDE libraries are always loaded? Meh, I don’t mind.
  • the PC speaker beeps now! I actually hate that. =)
  • The mouse was made fancy again.
  • Firefox: firefox3.real was renamed to firefox.

  • Deluge died because of a Python update, but it was later fixed.

(date not recorded) – PCLinuxOS 2007 final ∞

The good

  • What a speed improvement!
  • PDF previewing rocks
  • can edit the menu and immediately see the changes in the hotkey editor!
  • when installing it detected my mp3 as bootable. Neat, I don’t think I had my player inserted when installing in the past.
  • when installing, the user addition is less confusing

  • rebooting from the liveCD works now! Yay!

    • update: it only ‘usually’ works. =/

  • I can reboot with my headset plugged in, and it sees both sound devices! Yay!

The bad

  • Why is “kdebase-kate” there instead of “kate”? =/

  • The fonts in Firefox and Konqueror suck now. Maybe there’s a package to install for those fonts or maybe I have to salvage them from somewhere else.
  • XMMS‘ properties all have a terrible font.

  • Still here: Launching Synaptic (via synaptic) directly, gives the following in a popup window behind the ‘run’ dialogue:

KKDEInit could not launch 'kgsu'.: Could not find 'gksu' executable.

Software which used to be available but is now missing:

  • Open Cubic Player
  • whois is gone by default now. =/ I guess the remasters will add this stuff back in..

  • Probably lots of other stuff..

(date not recorded) – 2007-TR4 ∞

Test Release 4

I obliterated my partitioning because of a bug in cfdisk. But I managed to restore things.

Somehow I got an invalid video mode. I think it was the screen saver when booted off the LiveCD. Strange.

Issues
  • The installer doesn’t prompt anything when you close the window while copying. Sad.
  • When booting from the LiveCD, there is a strange black screen and pause while nothing happens. I think this is the kdm hanging issue.
  • Hmm, trying to use Firefox while installing isn’t as smooth an experience as I remember. Strange.
  • Boot off the live CD, log in as root into KDE and then reboot. The final statement is Press <enter> when disk is removed except that this doesn’t always work.

  • K3b can’t verify an image after burning. =/ It just hangs there…

bugs

  • KWrite 4.5.6 has a stupid bug: Go to the top of a file and press enter. The blank lines appear above the cursor. =/

good

Hmm, I have to install xmms-alsa, XMMS isn’t even installed by default now. Amarok is so bloated and fancy. =/

AmaroK’s global hotkeys are lame.. it uses control-shift-z which is used when editing in firefox.

2007-03-31 – 2007-TR3 ∞

new niceties

  • VERY fast control-alt-f1 switching out to the console or back. Yay!

    • I don’t do that these days, mostly because I can’t lock a console properly, and autologout from the .85 days went away.
    • 2017-01-23 – Screen has a lock feature.
  • Nice industrial style on the liveboot CD .. but I preferred the earlier friendlier look.
  • another new mouse theme. Interesting
  • The control panel is a small nightmare the navigate – the icons are all too similar and boring. They need bolded titles.
  • root uses highlighted grip
  • The menu editor is VERY fast to load up now
  • Faster bootup into the install

  • A missing profile is automatically-generated now. Awesome.

issues
  • Autologout from the .85 days went away.
  • The install went fine – but where is the progress countdown? I liked seeing how long the install would take.
  • More complicated installation because of the network detection options, but that’s fine.
  • GRUB as the default bootloader? Neat.
  • VERY slow kdm startup. Boo. I’ll probably experiment with XDM one day.

  • KDE control center is gone.

    • That’s because it’s been renamed. Somehow it was renamed to “configure your desktop” which I mistook for “configure desktop” which is boring. It’s in the taskbar as an icon, and it’s also in (the pclos menu) > system > configuration > configure your desktop .. so what is this, a typo? My “desktop” is the thing which has the icons on it. As opposed to the KDE window manager. Sigh.
  • Fixing broken KDE defaults – hotkeys, colours, etc.

  • EncFS troubleshooting was a pain to figure out.

I want to stop using /tmp for user-related things. It seems that some of these are still pointed to /tmp and not /home/user/tmp

DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-1LgH5fX0Ka,guid=a66add79cfeeca627e94120046329e3d
GCONF_TMPDIR=/tmp
SCREENDIR=/home/user/tmp
SESSION_MANAGER=local/localhost:/tmp/.ICE-unix/15144
TMP=/home/user/tmp
TMPDIR=/home/user/tmp
bugs

  • Launching ‘synaptic’ directly, gives:

KKDEInit could not launch 'kgsu'.:    Could not find 'gksu' executable.
  • synaptic is missing from pcc.

  • there seem to be some issues with the keyboard. I sometimes get odd characters in Firefox when I do a control-c in the location line. It’s strange. I do notice a keyboard speed change in this release though.. so maybe some preferences are different by default and it causes oldschool keyboard issues.

Missing apps

But they’ll probably return for .94/.95

  • kphone
  • Blackbox is no longer in the repository. Perhaps it will come back, since it existed in .93a
  • RAR is gone, but unrar is in the repository.
  • Lopster
  • tree is still missing by default
  • whois
  • LFTP isn’t installed by default any more.

  • I still want to see EncFS included! =)

PCLinuxOS 2007-TR3 pcc ∞

PCLinuxOS 2007-pre3 “pcc” (PCLinuxOS Control Panel)

One big issue I have is that the theme has gone WAY downhill. This is especially seen with pcc, where all the icons look the same.

Screenshots, showing unfriendly icons:

Sharing
Sharing
Groupware
Groupware
Online Registration
Online Registration
Boot
Boot
Hardware
Hardware
Mount Points
Mount Points
Network & Internet
Network & Internet
Security
Security
System
System

at work ∞

  • I can only get 1600×1200 working

  • My headset worked for a bit, and worked even better after a while, but then it went dead and no headset works at all.

I rebooted because my system was running slow for some reason..

I hung at Setting hostname localhost: and with some experimentation I was able to boot into the safe mode thing, and I removed ntp because I thought that was the issue but it didn’t work. Multiple reboots wouldn’t work, because I couldn’t get to ‘interactive mode’ to stop whatever that was from happening. I tried holding and even repeatedly tapping i but it just would not work.

At one point I edited /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit to try to fix things, but I didn’t know enough to figure it out. Commenting a little bit didn’t work. I dunno.

acpi=off in the GRUB bootup did not work.

Fixing broken KDE defaults ∞

Fixing broken KDE defaults

2006-01-05 – Preview 0.92 ∞

2006-01-17 — I just had the strangest experience. I wanted to reinstall things, and when I used the PCLinuxOS .92 liveboot CD its installer wouldn’t go and it wouldn’t mount my USB thumbdrive. This is the same CD which I originally installed my setup from, so this should be impossible. Something weird is happening.

Because of the above note, these following notes are likely from 2006-01-17 or earlier:

  • Cannot set “Home” with a hotkey (in my case ctrl-alt-f) since it crashes every time. Instead, set the hotkey to the networking > www > konqueror application directly.
  • dvd playback doesn’t really work. I made an application shortcut to xine dvd:// (xine) to solve this.

  • telnet (Telnet) spits out ^M, ^? etc.. in one game after connecting, but seems ok at the login screen (although the first attempt always fails when using a backspace). Hrmph.

MPlayer-plugin on screen display is really annoying.

In /etc/mplayerplug-in.conf

change:

osdlevel=0

re-installation mishap ∞

I had a bit of an installation misadventure yesterday and today.

First, I’ve had some wonky issues with it for various reasons, mostly because I tinker where I shouldn’t. So I wasn’t too surprised when things started going south on me. I had issues with my Dell DJ Ditty not being automatically mounted and in fact not even being mountable manually. I decided I’d do a reinstall because I wanted this home setup to be in line with my work setup so I can get VMWare working properly.

So I started an install and then headed to work. When I came back to get everything wrapped up I couldn’t get booted in and get sound, USB and networking to do anything. It would all error out on startup.

I tried a couple of things while I waited.. but nothing would work.

It finally dawned on me that it was an issue with LILO.. the bootloader was making assumptions for kernel information that didn’t exist any more since things were reinstalled.

Playing around, for reasons I still can’t figure out the LiveCD couldn’t run LILO.

The solution:

  1. Boot into .92
  2. Install .92
  3. Open up a console
  4. su
  5. mount the HD’s partition
  6. chroot into it

  7. nano /etc/lilo.conf

    • .. and make sure it’s sane
  8. lilo

  9. reboot

For reasons unknown, the liveboot’s attempt with LILO fails. In my case, after doing the HD install, fiddling around only to notice that the master boot record (MBR) was empty and nothing was bootable, I booted back into the liveboot CD and manually fiddled around. The result is the above set of instructions.

In the end it wasn’t a big deal, and certainly not the issue I thought it was.. but very odd.

PCLinuxOS 0.92 pcc ∞

PCLinuxOS 0.92 “pcc” (PCLinuxOS Control Panel)

Screenshots, showing friendly icons:

Boot
Boot
Hardware
Hardware
Mount Points
Mount Points
Networking
Networking
Security
Security
System
System
Sharing
Sharing
Network Services
Network Services
Authentication
Authentication
Groupware
Groupware

(date not recorded) – Preview 0.91 ∞

hwdetect breaks things, and fsck.rootfs isn’t found and gives error 2 when booting up and trying to check the root filesystem after an improper shutdown.

Change your /etc/fstab from:

/dev/root / rootfs defaults 0 0

to:

/dev/hda3 / ext3   defaults 1 1

(or whatever is appropriate)

kaffeine default dvd device is set to /dev/cdrom0 and should be /dev/dvd

texstar: That was before udev was properly creating /dev/dvd so I pointed it to the most likely suspect for .91.

(date not recorded) – Preview 0.9 ∞

  • findutils has been added

  • Timidity++ has been added (I needed this for prboom)

(date not recorded) – Preview 81a ∞

  • can’t get Centericq with msn support because libcurl wasn’t compiled with ssl support.

  • Security settings to “paranoid” disable user login. This is probably a good thing though.

Resolved in 0.9:

  • When switching to a console with ctrl-alt-f1, I am unable to log in as root. I can, however, log in as my regular user and then su to root.

  • To fix Firefox‘s fonts, namely to make m not be chopped off on the right-hand side in MediaWiki edit boxes:

    • Font preferences to raise the minimum font size up a notch. This isn’t a perfect solution.
    • Nimbus Mono L, size 14. Looks ok.
  • Needs “tree“
  • there is some leftover history in Konqueror. Oops. =)

  • Firefox can’t properly launch a real video player without magic. Argh. I hate all of the existing players too.

DVDs ∞

  • ln -s /dev/cdrom1 /dev/dvd

    • Modifying /etc/fstab (fstab) didn’t work.. =/
    • edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local (rc.local) and add that to the bottom.
  • Install libdvdcss and libcss from the Synaptic repository.
  • Increase the sound with Menu > Multimedia > Sound > Kmix (Kmix) — Mixer > PCM volume

  • With Blackbox, switching workspaces mutes dvd playback in kaffeine Player and can restart the video too. =/

  • I can’t rewind a dvd?! (resolved in 0.9)

“xine dvd://” (xine) is the direct way to access a dvd.

2005-12-27 – (version not recorded) ∞

PCLinuxOS is what Slackware would become if it cared about usability and X more. Extraordinarily usable, amazing hardware detection, everything just works. Very easily modified to make a new liveCD distribution.

Well.. I’m happy enough with where I am. Now it’s more a problem with the software itself than with the environment or packaging. That’s the way it should be. I’m still confused at the preferences many programmers have.. some software isn’t near its potential because of poor design decisions. Sigh.

2005-10-09 – (version not recorded) ∞

It’s done. I’ve completely embraced the default installation of PCLinuxOS. After a bit of a struggle, I figured things out enough to be able to build an installation on a real partition through a VMWare window. Booting into it was a slight trick, but I figured it out (it turned out to be bad LILO settings).

Booting into it was a joy. Everything, and I mean everything, is nice and peppy. It’s a wonderful experience. I used to swear by Blackbox because of its light footprint.. but ya know.. blackbox grew on me from back in my very very low-end days. The new KDE and my somewhat newer (but still ancient) hardware really work wonderfully together.

Moving the server offsite has obviously freed up resources as well. I think the slowest thing in this setup has always been its HDDs. That’ll take some doing to solve.

I’m puttering around, using the default applications and I’m rather enjoying myself. Yes, there’s a lot of bloat under the hood.. but frankly, it doesn’t really matter to me any more. I’m tired of tinkering.

I do still have some setup decisions to make, but that’ll go quite well as soon as some other little tasks are out of the way.

  • 2005-12-02 — I fiddled with PCLinuxOS to get graphics acceleration working. It was way more annoying than it should have been.

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