mypclinuxos Archives - Yet Another Linux Blog

PCLinuxOS Reloaded and Rebranded 2007

As some of you know, I own and operate mypclinuxos.com, which is a community projects website for PCLinuxOS. What some of you may not know is that PCLinuxOS held an official contest earlier last summer to select a new logo. The community voted through three rounds of elimination on this new logo, created by the winning artist nicknamed ludi.

Winning Logo

Logo after request for modification from creator of PCLinuxOS

Coming Soon, 2007…is this the final version of the logo?

Just after the project, I pitched an idea in the mypclinuxos.com forums on creating how-to’s for beautifying the desktop which received immediate support and the PCLinuxOS Beautification Project was born. Not only did this team of graphics designers, many of which operate their own web design and graphics companies, make it easy to have fantastic theme sets for the PCLinuxOS Desktop, it also makes them as easy to install as using Synaptic. After install via snyaptic, a quick change in the KDE Control Center, and you’re set!

This team really has outdone what I expected of them…I honestly didn’t think they’d grow to encompass many themes, wallpapers, Beryl Splashes, window decorations, font, icons, etc. for PCLinuxOS and the next coming version .94. But there are so many talented artists in this project that they have made PCLinuxOS fantastic polished distro. Now the solidarity of the PCLinuxOS desktop is conveyed by the overall themes of the desktop making .94 a ‘must see release’

I’m excited to be a part of the development process of PCLinuxOS through the Beautification Project and proud to be a community leader with mypclinuxos.com. So when .94 comes out, make sure you give it a try! You won’t be sorry you did as PCLinuxOS will not only look great, but work out of the box for a majority of users!

Why I Choose PCLinuxOS

There’s been quite a few postings and articles on new users and Linux flourishing during the past year. The reason I believe this to be is that desktop Linux is approaching or has arrived at the tipping point where it can gain mainstream adoption. People are seeing Linux as a viable alternative to Microsoft. My wife recently had me nuke the dual boot computer and go with Linux due to Windows Media Player 11 restrictions set to come out when it is released. Her main concern is being told by companies how she should be able to listen to her music after she’s bought it…kinda like buying a car and the dealer tells you where you can drive it and how you can. She’s in the process of converting all her mp3’s to ogg’s to 1) save space and 2) because they sound better and are in a free format. Thus far, she’s not missing Windows.

Many blogs also have taken up this topic and, when determining the best Linux desktop, gushed about Xandros, Freespire, Ubuntu, and MEPIS. The thing I find odd is that they forget the little guy that’s outpacing all the others…and that little guy is PCLinuxOS. Let’s take a look at a few reasons why PCLinuxOS is, IMHO, the best Linux flavor for new users.

Continue reading “Why I Choose PCLinuxOS”

PCLinuxOS .93 xorg.conf problem quick fix

If you’re like me, you change things constantly in your linux desktop. I’m always entering in and tweaking .conf files to see what I can do and where the limits of things might be. In my attempt yesterday to get my EXACT monitor supported in PCLinuxOS, I hosed my xorg.conf file which is where all the Xsession settings (or Xwindows session) are stored (like mouse, keyboard, monitor, and graphics driver settings). Since I hosed this up, my graphical user interface and window manager would not start. So I was dropped to login via the shell. This might be daunting for some new users in Linux so I figured I’d write up this little how-to that would get them back on their feet.

First, don’t be intimidated by the shell. It’s more powerful than a cmd line in windows and you’ll have complete control of your computer from the confines of this awesome tool. Plus, you’re about 15-20 seconds away from having your desktop back up and running by executing only a few commands.

In order to fix your xorg.conf file, it’s important that we become root…so login as root and let’s fix your xorg.conf file in 4 commands.

Continue reading “PCLinuxOS .93 xorg.conf problem quick fix”

Inside MyPCLinuxOS

I’ve been extremely busy during the last month supporting and starting projects for PCLinuxOS. For those of you who may not know, I am the webmaster for http://mypclinuxos.com. What I desired when creating the site was a place that the community could come to help make PCLinuxOS better. Not that it wasn’t good on its own…it does just fine. Just that I wanted the community to feel more a part of development and to have them take pride in the distro.

I’m really impressed with the way the community has responded, not only to the creation of mypclinuxos, but also to the organization of the site. I’ve tried very hard to provide any open source tool available for web based project development for everyone that I could provide in a shared host environment. Heck, I’d even configure tomcat on my home Linux box and put it out there if they needed it. Why do I do this? Why do I do this for free? How do I do this for free?

Well, let’s get into it shall we? Inside the start of MyPCLinuxOS…

I started Yet Another Linux Blog a few years back to chronicle my search for the perfect desktop distribution and to house many tips and tricks that I had in my arsenal and also that I had run across on the web. I found PCLinuxOS after my wife determined that it was the best Linux desktop available last year while participating in my Linux experiment. It completely replaced the SimplyMEPIS install I had on every computer in my home and it also replaced the disks I hand out to friends.

I laid low in the PCLinuxOS community, checking out the pulse by forum lurking. I hung out in IRC using an alias that no one could trace to TKS (the nick I used at the time) nor my current nick of devnet. I tried to really grasp what community I had got myself into. After I determined that the community was fantastic…I was ready to give back.

See, I started a fan site for SimplyMEPIS and had my efforts dashed by various sources. I had been an active member of the MEPIS community in the early days of the distro and it was amazing how fast those I considered my ‘community family’ turned on me when my opinion differed from theirs. So when I decided to support PCLinuxOS, I was VERY careful about what I was getting myself into. I couldn’t be happier with where I am at and where the distro is at today. I see the popularity for this distro going through the roof and I’m in for the ride. So it’s very nice to be a part of something like PCLinuxOS and to have gotten in on the ground level as a contributor.

One of the areas that I see PCLinuxOS hurting the most is in the internationalization arena. I truly believe that if we made PCLinuxOS available for install in as many languages as Ubuntu or OpenSuSe does, we’d be right up there with them in popularity and userbase. As it is now, PCLinuxOS is released in English only. MyPCLinuxOS has many people forming teams right now to change that. If you’d like to see PCLinuxOS in different languages both for the installer and LiveCD, head over to MyPCLinuxOS and join up with our team to help us do so. That’s it for now. I’ll have more updates about MyPCLinuxOS and what’s going on there in the future.

PCLinuxOS Magazine Releases Initial Issue!

Normally, I don’t like to rehash the news. However, in this case, I’m a member of the contributors and the admin/webmaster of both development sites for the magazine…I feel a bit inclined to let everyone know about it 😀

“It is my privilege to announce on behalf of the team members of the PCLinuxOS Magazine Project sponsored by MyPCLinuxOS.com, the September 2006 introductory issue is available for download! We’ve put a lot of
effort into producing a quality magazine made for the community, by the community.

Contained inside are many articles written for the
PCLinuxOS community and a few for those interested but not yet using
it. Some highlights include:

An interview with Susan Linton of Tuxmachines.org
An RPM Tutorial for beginning users
Hunting rootkits with Rootkithunter on PCLinuxOS
Much, Much more!

Please note that the magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 license unless otherwise stated on the articles themselves. By
downloading this magazine you must acknowledge and accept this license agreement.

We’ve released the magazine in two versions in pdf format. We designed the magazine for viewing in KPDF but other viewers will work as well. The two formats of the magazine are Viewer Default (VD) and Presentation Mode (PM). Viewer default will display the magazine in the default mode your reader is setup with and Presentation
Mode starts in full screen.

PCLinuxOS Editor-In-Chief, Archie, has further explanation of the downloads:

“The following files are best viewed in KPDF. Other readers, such as Adobe Reader, Ghostview, XPDF can also be used. The following instruction is based on using KPDF.

PCLinuxOS_Mag_200609_PM.pdf is initially in presentation. Moving pages forward is as easy as clicking the left mouse button. To go back a page, the user just right-click the mouse button. And exiting the Presentation Mode is not harder than pressing the ESC key.

A user can also hover the mouse cursor on the top of the screen and there will appear some navigation buttons. On the top left-hand side are the blue forward and back buttons; on the right-hand side is the exit button.”

Head over to the downloads section to download the latest issue of the magazine. Thanks for your interest in PCLinuxOS! If you feel you’d like to contribute to future issues, please check out the contribute link in the main menu. You can also drop us a line via the contact link in the main menu. If you have any suggestions, comments, or letters to the editor feel free to submit them this way or send an email to mag@mypclinuxos.com. Thanks and enjoy!

PCLinuxOS Magazine Download

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