More about Linux

In my most recent column, I wrote about some of the rough edges I think Linux still has — specifically the Ubuntu and Kubuntu distros. As you might expect, because I didn’t praise their OS of choice, I got dozens of curse-filled notes from Linux users.

Oh, wait. I didn’t. Those are Mac users I was thinking of. The Linux people sent me some nice notes, disagreeing in some cases, asking for clarification in others. As usual, a pleasant experience.

One thing that was mentioned was that I really needed to try PCLinuxOS. I had tried to get it, but at the time the various servers that normally housed it were down.

So yesterday I finally got it and installed it. And lemme tell you, it’s a nice piece of work. I really liked Kubuntu — rough edges and all — and PCLO is even nicer. Quick install, beautiful interface, and it deals with one problem I’ve had with other distros: Almost all the configuration options are in one place.

If I was asked to recommend a Linux distro, PCLinuxOS is definitely at the top of my list.

That said, PCLO still has some of those rough edges I mentioned. I took some screen shots to show what I mean.

After I installed it, it was time to reboot. I got the dialog box below asking me which bootloader I wanted to use: GRUB with graphical menu, GRUB with text menu, or LILO with text menu. (Click to enlarge.)

Well, sheesh, I have no clue. I like graphical menus, so that’s what I chose. But when you install Windows you don’t get cryptic messages like this. (Why would I want to delay booting “default image,” and what is that, anyway? And what is ACPI? You get the idea.)

Next I’m shown the entries on my boot menu, and given the opportunity to change them.

As I only planned to boot into PCLinuxOS, I wasn’t gonna mess with this. Nor did I know the difference between “linux” and “linux-non-fb.” (Nor was there any explanation.)

Finally, with everything done, I was told to “Please halt your computer, remove your live system, and restart your computer.”

The “live system” referred to the CD I had booted from. But the instructions were wrong. I didn’t need to “halt” anything. I needed to restart the computer. Further, the computer needed to access the CD while shutting down, so I couldn’t remove it.

The correct instruction at this point is “Please click finish, restart the computer. You will be prompted to remove the CD or other boot media before PCLinuxOS restarts.”

There were some other oddities during install. For example, I chose to wipe my hard drive and install from scratch, but that generated a cryptic instruction about restarting and choosing it again. I did, and it worked – but not quite the way the instructions made it sound.

When I tried to install on my laptop with a built-in wireless card, it couldn’t find the card and thus couldn’t go online. Instead, it gave me a URL when I could download “NDIS Wrapper,” but no further instructions.

Of course, I had to download that on another computer. I did, and I then popped it on a Secure Digital card I had, because the laptop had an SD port. Unfortunately, PCLinuxOS wouldn’t recognize it. I still don’t have the network installed.

And that’s what I mean by “rough edges.” Linux has clearly made the leap from geek toy to solid and stable enthusiast operating system. But to make that final jump to mass acceptance, it’s going to need a little more tweaking.

Besides changing the words in some of the installation dialogs (and adding more non-geek explanation), I’d like to see a distro that loads with only the best-of-breed apps for certain functions. There are at least five options in PCLinuxOS under “Internet/File Transfer,” and it took some trial and error to find a simple FTP program among them. Ditto for chat clients.

Instead, I’d like the developers to say, “We’ll install one text editor, one chat client, one FTP program,” and so on. Yes, they’ll have to make judgement calls, but that’s OK. I’ll still have the option to install alternatives when I’m ready.

For the most part, Linux isn’t hard to use, it’s just different. So there’s a learning curve. A cleaner, leaner install would help reduce that curve by reducing the number of decisions a new user needs to make.

Almost there. Almost.