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Posts tagged as “pclinuxos”

Best Linux Distro Award: The Envelope Please…

By FOSS Force on February 6, 2017 |

Distros, Polls and Site News

Best Linux Distro Award: The Envelope Please…Arch Linux Best Linux Distro 2016

For the second year in a row, Arch Linux wins both rounds in our poll to determine the winner of our Readers’ Choice Award for Best Linux Distro.

The FOSS Force Readers’ Choice Awards Poll

Arch Linux Best Linux Distro 2016The readers of FOSS Force have made their voices heard and for the second year in a row you have chosen Arch Linux to be the recipient of the FOSS Force Readers’ Choice Award for Best Linux Distro. The recipient was determined by the results of a poll that opened on January 30 and closed at noon EST today.

The selection was a two part process that began with a qualifying poll in which readers could suggest distros to be included in the just ended final round of voting. The final round asked the question, “Which of the GNU/Linux distros listed below would you choose to win the FOSS Force ‘Best Desktop Distro’ Award for 2016?”

This year, both rounds of polling set records for our site. As they like to say after political elections, voter turnout was very heavy.

Continue readingBest Linux Distro Award: The Envelope Please…
Five Favorite Linux DistrosTux Linux distros

Five Favorite Linux Distros

By Christine Hall on August 8, 2016 |

Distros and Reviews

Like everybody, we love “five best” lists. Trouble is, how can we come up with a five best list of anything when we haven’t even begun to look at them all? What we can do is list “five favorites,” like we’ve done with this list of five favorite Linux distros.

I’ve never been a distro hopper. Not at all. I started out with Mandrake back around 2002, and stuck with Mandrake/Mandriva until 2010. When it became obvious that the distro was in serious financial dodo and wasn’t likely to be around much longer, I moved to PCLinuxOS. This move was made partly because the distro had started life as a fork of Mandrake/Mandriva, keeping me in familiar territory, but mostly because it was one of two distros I could find that supported the Wi-Fi on an old Dell laptop I was using at the time. In 2012 I moved to Bodhi Linux after falling in love with the simple elegance of the Enlightenment 17 desktop, and the next year switched over to Linux Mint Xfce edition when we finally got around to setting up a full time office for FOSS Force.

Tux Linux distros

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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It’s Time for ‘What’s Your Distro’ Round One

By FOSS Force on January 4, 2016 |

Community, Distros, Operating Systems and Polls

FOSS Force Best Distro 2015

The FOSS Force Poll

It’s time for our annual “What’s Your Distro” poll, to determine who gets the FOSS Force Best Distro Award for 2015. This year we’re pulling out all the stops. We want this one to be a metaphoric old fashioned slug fest that will be played until only one distro is standing.

Continue readingIt’s Time for ‘What’s Your Distro’ Round One

From Windows XP to Linux: Adding to the List

By Larry Cafiero on May 13, 2015 |

Desktops, Distros and Operating Systems

Yesterday on Datamation, Matt Hartley wrote what could best be described as a reminder piece about the folks using Windows XP at home or in small businesses having options when it comes to replacing that particular operating system, and that the best option — go ahead and say it with me — is Linux.

Hartley mentions an adequate lineup of distros — Linux Mint, Ubuntu MATE, PCLinuxOS, and Puppy Linux (okay, for the really old machines, I’ll go with that one) — but in the wide world of Linux, there are more. Several more. Okay, maybe more than several more.

I understand that Matt may not have wanted to get bogged down in a distro food fight, and while I enjoy that as much as the next guy or gal, I’m not looking to hurl edible projectiles either. But I don’t shy away from it either.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingFrom Windows XP to Linux: Adding to the List
Punching Out the Week on Boxing DayPCLOS Logo

Punching Out the Week on Boxing Day

By Larry Cafiero on December 26, 2014 |

Business, Distros, Internet and News

FOSS Week in Review

So much joy abounds on Christmas morning, unless of course you’re trying to set up your new XBox or your new PlayStation (See? You should have waited for the Steam box…). But you can’t blame the North Koreans for that — blame is being heaped upon your friends at the Lizard Squad which, according to an article in USA Today (Tomorrow, the World!), is taking credit for the takedown (not their first try at this — they have previously claimed credit for attacks earlier this year on the PlayStation Network, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends).

So the gaming may have to wait.

But now that it’s Boxing Day, let’s punch out the week with a couple of tidbits from the week that was, as 2014 is winding down and 2015 is in our sights.

Marriott Boycott? Manic geek Jim Lynch — his self-description, not mine — opines on his blog post on Christmas Day that we should maybe not stay at hotels like Marriott or others that attempt to force guests to pay for wireless connectivity by blocking networks other than that provided by the hotel. But wait, there’s more: Marriott is asking the Federal Communications Commission for the government’s blessing to do this.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingPunching Out the Week on Boxing Day
Linux Advocates in the Wild

Linux Advocates in the Wild

By Ken Starks on August 2, 2014 |

Desktops, Operating Systems and Software

Every now and then, you get the opportunity to show others what your Linux computer looks like. Some of those people will want to give Linux a shot on their computers as well. I can’t think of anything as gratifying as teaching someone how to use desktop Linux. On a personal level, I do it because I am sick of fixing friends’ and family’s Windows problems. On a professional level, well…that’s my job.

I want to tell you a story about one of those Linux conversions and the amazing ripple effect that one person caused. You just never know how far your kindness can spread.

tux_linux_inside_512Jaimee is a bright young lady. She attends a magnet school for the gifted and accelerated students in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She lives with her aunt during the school year and comes home to her family during the summer months. She will be a senior this coming school year and she is focusing on a career in physics. The entrance exam for this magnet school is brutal.Think of it as SATs on steroids. And this is just the high school.

Ken Starks

Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue

linuxlock.blogspot.com/
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SolusOS: Life Happens…Distros Die

By Ken Starks on October 25, 2013 |

Distros and News

switchboardThe emails began about 7 AM.

“Is Ikey serious. Is this a joke. WTF?”

“Ken, have you seen this?”

“This has got to be a joke…right? Everything was OK yesterday? What happened?”

Here in the US, those of us who follow such things woke up to somber news:

“It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of SolusOS. Simply put, there is no longer enough manpower to fulfil [sic] the vision. What began as a Debian derivative evolved into an independent distribution, without the large development team required to back such an effort.”

Ken Starks

Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue

linuxlock.blogspot.com/
Continue readingSolusOS: Life Happens…Distros Die

And Your First Linux Distro Was…

By FOSS Force on August 2, 2013 |

Distros and Polls

Back on June 23, when we asked you to name the first Linux distro you ever used, we pretty much knew that the choice “Other” would take the day.

That’s because we wanted to be completely neutral, so the ten choices we offered besides “Other” were just the top ten distros from the Distrowatch “Page Hit Ranking,” which meant that those who started their Linux life with something other than Debian or SUSE in the pre-Ubuntu era were not represented.

Continue readingAnd Your First Linux Distro Was…
Debian Tops Our Community Distro PollDebian community distro

Debian Tops Our Community Distro Poll

By FOSS Force on July 18, 2013 |

Distros and Polls

The results have been tallied and Debian got the most votes in our Community Distro Poll. We would call them the “winner,” but this wasn’t about winners and losers. It was about trying to reach a consensus on what we mean by the term “community distro.” We asked, “Which GNU/Linux distros do you consider to be legitimate community distros?” Choices weren’t limited to one; voters could choose as many as they wanted and even add more through a text box supplied by choosing “Other.”

Continue readingDebian Tops Our Community Distro Poll
Best Newbie Distro? You Say Linux Mint.Linux Mint Tux

Best Newbie Distro? You Say Linux Mint.

By FOSS Force on June 13, 2013 |

Distros and Polls

According to our “Newbie” Distro Poll, someone considering moving from Windows or Mac to Linux should consider taking Linux Mint for a spin. The poll asked the question, “What Linux distro would you be most likely to recommend to a new Linux user?” Evidently this was a subject that interested many of you, because a whopping 1,339 votes were cast in this poll, making it the most number of votes one of our polls has ever received.

Continue readingBest Newbie Distro? You Say Linux Mint.
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