This happened on Friday, where my very loyal PCLinuxOS system had finally shown its age. Constant desktop freezes/crashes and the signs of slowing down prompted me to go distro-hopping again, searching for a new distro which can work flawlessly on my laptop...just like Morpheus going looking for Neo all over again :-p
The first distro that I tried was the new Kubuntu KDE4 Remix, with the latest KDE 4 which lets you import widgets from Mac. The interface is very modern (way better than Gnome 2.2 IMHO) and I actually like it very much, especially the new Dolphin File Manager which enables you to explore files on your computer like never before....a revolution to me.
The new KDE4
Dolphin File Manager at its bestBut unfortunately, the distro is far from perfect. Non-KDE applications like Firefox look weird and ugly in the new environment. Not to mention also the lack of 'root' access which comes in useful at times and a PPPoe controller to connect to Streamyx. So with that I had to bid goodbye to my friend of only an hour (it took just 20 mins to install the whole system). I did try out Fedora 9 KDE (a new one...was just out a few days ago) but it feels sluggish and slow.
In then end, I stumbled upon this.....gOS. If you click on the link and go to the official website, don't be shocked thinking that you have entered the Apple website. It's actually a Linux distro which is built on top of Ubuntu, with Mac's Leopard-like GUI and interface. But most importantly, it performs blazing fast on my laptop....much faster than PCLinuxOS when I first installed it. Tried running a simulation in Matlab....man it was a screamer! And most of all, all my laptop Fn + keys now are working at last, brightness control buttons and the rest....those that never worked with PCLinuxOS. I'm not saying that gOS is better than PCLinuxOS, but at the moment, gOS does have the upper hand....at least till the next release of PCLinuxOS.
gOS Space in its full glory :-)
In then end, I stumbled upon this.....gOS. If you click on the link and go to the official website, don't be shocked thinking that you have entered the Apple website. It's actually a Linux distro which is built on top of Ubuntu, with Mac's Leopard-like GUI and interface. But most importantly, it performs blazing fast on my laptop....much faster than PCLinuxOS when I first installed it. Tried running a simulation in Matlab....man it was a screamer! And most of all, all my laptop Fn + keys now are working at last, brightness control buttons and the rest....those that never worked with PCLinuxOS. I'm not saying that gOS is better than PCLinuxOS, but at the moment, gOS does have the upper hand....at least till the next release of PCLinuxOS.
gOS Space in its full glory :-)
2 comments:
Hey Marktrix
Shouldn't you at least be more specific about what problems PCLOS is giving you ... ?
What does "showing its age" mean ? New applications don't work with PCLOS ? Its graphics feel dated ?
Hi John,
Thank you for your input.
In my case, PCLOS started to feel slow after months of use. Firefox had the tendency to lockup and hang before coming up again. And sometimes, I had to go to the point of restarting the whole PC when the lockup caused everything to hang as well.
Basically, my "showing age here" here means the system had really slow down to the point that I couldn't run my simulations on Matlab anymore, especially when both Firefox and Evolution are opened too.
New applications and graphics didn't bother me much actually. It's more to speed since I deal with loads of number crunching in my PhD work. And honestly speaking, gOS runs much faster than a freshly installed PCLOS. But that's only for my system.
But if you want to have PCLOS on your system, by all means go ahead. It's stable and much faster than some of the distros out there. It's just that it didn't work out on mine. But I did enjoy my time working on PCLOS. It brought me to the FOSS world!! :-)
Cheers
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