| PCLinuxOS |
I have dedicated this page to the best system ever
made. It is a Linux distro similar to Mandrake, but in my
opinion much more userfriendly and easy to install, setup and use. I,m
a
newbie myself since I started using this distro in March 2006, but I
allready feel very comfortable with the features and design. I will
fill this page with some of my experiences using it and write
about the
software and plugins I use daily. But first off all I suggest
you visit
the homepage and maby also their forum.
PCLinuxOS
homepage PCLinuxOS
forum
The last 2 or 3 years I have installed and used different Linux
distros, Mandrake, Ubuntu, DSL, but I never became familiar with any of
them and went back to use Windows XP for the most. After only a month
with PCLinuxOS I have everything (software, tools, features etc.) I
need and I only have to boot up XP if I want to test new Windowsbased
software or want to give a person some advice about XP-features.
Snapshots:
(opens in new window)
 
|
| Live
CD |
A great deal about most Linux distros is the Live CD's.
It
simpley means that you can run the system from a CD and use it for test
before installing on the harddisk. This will be a very good idea to a
start,
since you will know if your hardware is compatible with the distro.
Maby you have heard that Linux only can be used by geeks, but this is
simply a mistake. On most computers this distro runs without any
problems, even printers it finds all by itself (mine is an HP 1217)
Are you ready to give it a try? Great! - let's rock'n'roll!!
First you have to download a .iso file, containing the boot cd. This
is very easy, but you must have a cd-burner and software to use it - if
not you might have a friend who can download and burn the iso-file?
Now, go to this webpage
and notice the names of the files. If you have an Ati or Nvidia
graficcard that exactly match one of the names, choose that one, else
(and in most cases) choose the file: pclinuxos-p92.iso
NB! Recently a dane has translated PCLinuxOS to danish. His name is
Keld and the distro is named Keldix. Danish users could download that
distro from his webpage. If you are looking for other translations you can visit the international part of PCLinuxOS forums. Scroll down to the end of the page.
When download is complete, you open your burning software. You have to
look for the option "Burn image" or "Burn ISO". Then browse to the iso
file, choose it and burn. When the cd is finished you can reboot your
computer with the cd in your cd or dvd drive and the PCLinuxOS Live cd
should start up. If it does not you have to change the boot sequence in
your bios, so it will boot on cd instead or harddisk of floppy.
Now you can explore the system before installing on your harddisk, it
should be up and running in 3-4 minutes. Please mark that it runs
slower than if it was installed on HD, everything has to be loaded from
your cd/dvd-drive. Also notice that the default user is "User" - if you
want to explore the system setings you will be promted with
root-password, which simply is "root". You should also be aware that
every change you make will not be saved until next time you use the
Live CD. You should concider visiting the packet center where you can
explore the hudge amount of software you can install directly from the
PCLinuxOS controlcenter. Hit the K-menu icon on the left of your
screen. Choose Configuration > PCLinuxOS Controlcenter. (Login
with
"root") Choose System in the left menu, and next Add, Remove and
Update..... If you choose Sections you can browse the avalible packets.
Those marked with green are allready installed. Mark a packet to recive
more information about the software.
If you encounter problems using the LiveCD I suggest you visit the PCLinuxOS
forum and do a search on the problem. It
will
run on most computers without any problems though. Enjoy!!!
|
| Install
on your harddisk |
If you were as pleased with the PCLinuxOS experience as
I
were, you proberly want to install the distro permanent on your
harddisk. This is very easy, the short version: Boot the LiveCD again
and hit the Icon on your desktop for installation. The process is very
intuitive, just follow the steps on your screen. One thing you have to
concider though is the structure on your harddisk. You need at least 2
partitions for your Linux system, one for the main system and one for
the swap-file. I will suggest a 3. partition formatted as /home. In
this way you seperate your personal files from the systemfiles.
You have to choose between these senarios:
1) You want to erase all existing material on your hardisk or use a
second harddisk only for use with PCLinuxOS on this computer.
- in this case the procedure is simple, you just make the
partitioner tool create new partitions during installation.
2) You want to rearrange existing material on your harddisk and create
new partitions.
- You can use the partitioner tool for this aswell during
installation, but if you are more comfortable with a 3. part software
as Partition Magic you should use this. The partition used to
systemfiles should be formatted as Linux ext3, the partition for swap
file must be formatted as Linux swap. Make the systempartition 5 gb as
minimum, the swap around 500 mb.
In any case do a backup of all important files and maby also a Ghost
image of your existing system. If you don't have a clue about this
partition-stuff, concider ask a friend for help or at least search for
more information on the Internet.
When ready you should also visit this guide at the wiki section of PCLinux homepage
During the install you will be asked if you want to use a bootloader. I
suggest you choose Lilo and start with the default settings. You can
change this later. If you have a Windows system on another
partition, default will make a bootloader which promt you for the
system you want start on next boot.
PCLinuxOS will be set as
the
default system, you have 10 sec. to
change this when you start your computer. But as I wrote
before, this you can change later.
|
| Customize |
First update your system
Congratulations!! Since you continue reading I suppose
you have installed your new PCLinuxOS, good choice! I hope everything
went well, first you should browse the system for a while and make sure
that the stuff is working. (notice the hudge amount of software
allready installed!) If it does, your next step should be a complete
update of the system. This will take a while, as far as I remember you
will recive about 300 mb of packets to update everything. But you
should do it now to complete the installation and for a stabile system.
The
update is rather simple, and a great thing is, that it updates
everything installed on the system.
1) Hit the K-Menu, choose Configuration > PCLinuxOS Control
Center. Login with your root password.
2) Choose System and open the Packetadministration. (fourth icon in the
row to the right)
3) Hit the Reload button to make sure all packets are loaded, the hit
the Mark all Updates.
4) Then Apply, and Apply again to confirm. It now recives the new
packets and install the updates.
- This will take a while the first time, depending on your
Internetspeed - in the fututre you should do this 2 or 3 times a month.
5) When the installation is finished you should reboot your system.
Look and feel
PCLinucOS use the KDE interface as default and I suggest you keep it
that way.
You can install the Gnome packets from the Packetadministration if you
wish, but theres no need to do that, since KDE has everything you need.
You can customize allmost everything, backgrounds, windows, icons,
buttons, styles, headlines and much more. Go to the KDE
Control
Center (K-menu > Configuration) and choose the menu Look and
Feel.
Try some of the different looks until it feels like the right setup for
you. I made 2 snapshots before and 2 after customizing my system, click
the pictures to see them in full size. The pictures on the right are
examples on how the windows can look after modifying the look and feel.
Time, language and keyboard settings
If you have to do some changes here you should do it in the PCLinuxOS
Control Center, not in the KDE Control Center. In this way you will
make the changes for all users. In the Control Center choose System and
you will find the menus for Time and Language settings. If you need to
change the keybord you can do this under the menu Hardware.
You
will find a lot more information about customizing your PCLinuxOS if
you visit the wiki pages.
|
| Software |
As you will se PCLinuxOS comes with a lot of usefull
applications allready installed. In the Packetadministration you find
much more. It took me some time to find the software I need, in the
following I will descripe some of it. It might save
you some
time. For installation of packets you can do this in
the Packetadminstration. K-menu > Configuration
> PCLinuxOS Control Center > System.
Webbrowsing
 The
default webbrowser is Konqueror, the same as the filebrowser. I prefere
to use Mozilla Firefox which is already installed. You find it here:
K-menu > Networking > WWW > Mozilla Firefox. Tip:
You can drag
any Programicon to the desktop or to the panel, and choose "Link Here"
for faster access. The major reason I prefere Firefox is the hudge
amount of usefull plugins made to this browser. You can read more about
Firefox on the official homepage.
As an alternative you can use Opera, that comes in a packet with E-mail
client
and other stuff. It is not installed on the PCLinuxOS as default, you
can get it through the Packetadminstration. Hit the Search button
and do a search for "Opera". Mark the packet it finds for install and
hit Apply. On my system it did not make any shortcut during install,
but you can create one yourself and add "opera %u" to the commandline.
Read more at Opera.com
E-mail clients
I use 2 different E-mail clients for different kind of use. KMail is a
part of the suite Kontact,
comes with KDE and is found here: K-menu > Networking >
Mail
> KMail. It is a program like Microsofts Outlook and provides
you
with newsreader, adressbook, rss-feeder, notemanager and callendar. It
can run in the background and notice you when new mails
arrives. I
use this client for personal emails and contacts. In the Networking
> Mail - menu you find more tools for handeling mails. I also
use
Mozillas Thunderbird,
which I find to be one of the best clients ever made. I
use this one for notification mails from forums, rssfeeds and
newsgroups, it is
brilliant for that purpose. Do a search in the Packetadministration for
"mozilla-thunderbird" if you want to install the client.
Instant Messenger
Both Gaim and Kopete are very usefull clients for chatting with friends
all over the world. They support various protocols, among them also
MSN. Personally I use Gaim because of the very simple userinterface,
but Kopete comes with more functions. Try them out before you choose,
its no problem using both at the same time. You find them at K-Menu
> Networking > Instantant Messaging.
Office suite
 As
you will see there's a lot of tools for text-editing, databases and
calculation. I prefere the suite Open Office though. It supports
Microsoft documents and other files, and this becomes handy if you want
to share documents and files with users of Word, Word Perfect and other
Microsoft products. The Open Office suite is free to use as it's an
open
source project. You can install it using the Packetadminstration, do a
search for "OpenOffice". All depending packets are automatically chosen
for you when you apply. After installation you will find the suite in
the K-Menu > Office, placed in the apporpriate submenus. If you
like
to
read more about the suite you should go to the Open
Office webpage.
Antivirus
There are a few virusscanning tools for Linux you can use and
update for free. Among these I have done some experiments with ClamAV,
Bitdefender and F-Prot. They are all to be used with commandlines in a
terminal, except F-Prot. At that reason I prefere F-Prot as
scannertool. F-Prot can also be integtated with KMail and scans Emails
in real time. You have to  install
the virusscanner and the grafical frontend seperate. First do
a search for "fp-linux-ws" in the Packetadministration, mark it for
installation. Next search for "qtfprot" and mark this one aswell. Apply
and reboot your user after installation. You will then find
the virusscanner in K-Menu > Applications > File tools
as QTFprot Virus Scanner.
If you want to integrate the virusscanner with KMail; Open KMail and
hit Tools > Antivirus-Guide in the menu. F-Prot should now
appear in the box. Click Next and mark the 2 fields in the top, then
choose a folder where you want F-Prot to place the infected files. A
lot of
people say that antivirus software is not necessary in Linux distros,
but
in the other hand - it does not slow the computers preformance and
somehow I
follow the philosophy "Better safe than sorry" :-)
Burning cd's and dvd's
Not much to write here, use the K3b burning tool, it is stabile and has
the most important tools. You find it here:
K-Menu > Applications > Archiving > CD-Burning
> K3b
Filehandling
As mentioned before Konqueror is the default application for both
browsing the Internet and the locale filesystem. It is like Explorer in
Windows. I don't like it and prefere to use Krusader
for local filehandling and browsing. It supports a lot of compressed
packets as Zip, Rar, Tar etc. It is also an FTP client and has inbuild
a lot of other tools for viewing and editing files. Krusader is kind of
a clone from the former Windows Commander, now known as Total
Commander. You find the shortcut in K-Menu > Applications
> File
tools. Notice that there is 2 versions, one to use in normal usermode
and another that is used in
rootmode. Use the first one for normal fileaccess, and rootmode only
if you have to delete or modify rootprotected files.
|
| Tips
and Tools |
Finally I will make a short list of small adjustments
and
utillitys you might find usefull. Some of them have to be done from a
terminal. If you have not deleted the terminal icon from the quick
launch bar you find it right to the K-Menu, the icon looks a bit like a
monitor. Else you have some terminal tools in; K-Menu >
Terminals.
The Bootloader
If you used the default settings during installation and have another
system on your computer like XP, you will now have a graphical
bootloader called Lilo and PXLinuxOS as the default booting system. You
proberly have 10 sec. to change the boot into another system. If you
want to change these settings, go to the PCLinuxOS Control Center.
Under the menu Boot you change the bootorder and time under "Configure
the Lilo Boot Loader". If you get tired of selecting user and password
when you start your PCLinuxOS, you can choose autologin for your
default user, configure in "Enable autologin for selected user".
Mount your partitions
As you might have noticed allready, you can Mount (Access) your Fat
partitions from Linux and then reach your files in your Windows system.
These partitions are not mounted when booting, you have to do it
manually, for example from system:/media in a filebrowser. If you want
to share files on Fat partitions between Linux and Windows you will
find it better if these partitions mount automatically during the boot
process. You can do this by:
1) Open K_Menu > Applications > File tools >
Krusader -Root-mode and login with root password.
2) Navigate to the file /etc/fstab. Mark it and hit F4 (Edit)
3) You will find the information in this file that tells your system
how your partitions are mounted and accessed. Like this:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat
user,exec,rw,noauto,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
4) Notice that the line above has the parameter "noauto". To make the
specific partition mount during boot simply remove the "no" in "noauto"
and it will mount next time you boot your PCLinuxOS. Remember to save
the file when you finish editing.
Setup printer and scanner
PCLinuxOS has a tool that recognize most printers and scanners and
installs the necessary drivers. Go to PCLinuxOS Control Center >
Hardware and you will find menus to use. A quide will open and search
for your hardware, remember to have your printer pluged in and switched
on. If the guide does not find your printer or scanner you can pick the
manufactor and model from a list.
Create your own LiveCD/Backup
If you have a DVD burner you can make a complete and unique DVD of your
PCLinuxOS system. Not only can this be used as a complete backup, you
can also boot the DVD in any modern computer and get access to your own
files, desktop and software. It's really amazing!! The DVD is can also
be very usefull if you have to setup the same system on many
computeres. The reason you need a DVD is that the system has grown too
large for a CD with updates and extra software. Here's what you do:
1) First you need a tool to make an iso of your system. Go to the
Packetadministration, search for "mklivecd", mark it for installation
and apply. The
tool is ready to use as is.
2) Open a terminal, write su and hit <Enter>. Write your
root password and >Enter>. You now operate as root user.
3) In the terminal now write exactly: mklivecd --nodir=^/root/tmp
live.iso
- you can copy above into the terminal. The process wil take
15 - 30 minutes and creates the file live.iso in your home/user
directory.
4) When the iso is created insert an empty DVD in your drive, open
K-Menu > Applications > Archiving > CD Burning
> K3b
5) Choose Tools > Burn DVD ISO Image. Browse to your
homedirectory and pick live.iso. Burn the DVD and you,re done.
Tip: There are several parameters to use when you build the isofile. In
the terminal write: mklivecd --help to recive helpfull information
about which parameters and what they do.
Now
you have a excellent backup DVD that you can use Live in any computer
with DVD-drive and 256+ of mb Ram..
|
More to Tools and tips to come. Please pe patient :-)
By the way, if you have suggestions, comments or questions to this page
feel free to mail me. You find my adress on my profile page. |
|
