People who know me, are aware that my favourite distros are openSUSE and Debian.
Of late I liked Vector as well, but at the end of the day they have only about 1000 apps in their repos, AND (if you pay) you'll get an extended, 2 CD edition with KDE4 on it.
I belong to the group of KDE users who hate KDE4. In the best of case it is not ready for prime time yet (IMO).

Recently I downloaded and installed PCLinuxOS 2009.1

I used to find PCLinuxOS a decent distribution, but not a lot better than others.

The latest release surprised me: I was astonished what a distro created by a small(ish) team can do.
Texstar has always been a perfectionist: he didn't call his distro "stable" for years.
I feel that he has achieved that perfection now.
At the moment I only own a notebook, a Samsung NP-R700.
Notebooks are notoriously finicky with "alternative" operating systems.
With mine, until the previous release season I had great trouble setting up a wireless connection.
And I still have a lot of trouble configuring X the way I want it (especially after installing the NVIDIA driver): resolution, brightness...
From this point of view I found Vector to be better than others, but I gave up in the end because of the reasons explained above.
With PCLinuxOS everything worked out of the box: NVIDIA drivers automatically installed (or, rather, activated with one click), X very easily configured the way I wanted (even if the proprietary NVIDIA drivers are not on par with the Windows ones, at least not for all hardware), codecs also installed or very easily available from synaptic and, what matters most, ACTUALLY WORKING!
One night some (internet) friends and I were waiting for a program on line: most of those using Windows and WMP couldn't watch it. I could, very well, with Mplayer!!!
I have 8945 apps available from synaptic, which is of course a lot less than Debian, but plenty for most uses (and it is a very careful selection of what PCLinuxOS users might actually want).
What else to say? I did find one problem though, nothing is quite perfect. At first boot the system got stuck on "resetting X" (or something like that). After a couple of forced shutdowns (and not even REISUB worked) I solved the matter.
Another amazing feature is the extreme ease you can create a custom LiveCD/DVD: one click does it all for you!
You can expect every program vetted by the PCLinuxOS team to work out of the box, and to work well!
Give PCLinuxOS a spin, you won't be disappointed.

Addendum: beware!!!

I found a major con: their user forum.

You get "vetted" if you want to register. This is something I have never heard before.

And I was rejected!!!

What the hell, what could they possibly have against me???

I still recommend their distro, but be aware of this serious shortcoming.


Edit: issue solved. See below.

What do you mean by "vetted"? I am registered there, and usually offer a decent amount of criticism.

By "vetted" I mean just that. When you apply, they don't follow the usual procedure (send an email, confirm and you are a member). They sent me the following email:

"Before you can login and start using the forum, your request will be reviewed and approved. When this happens, you will receive another email from this address."

And then:

"Alessandro17,

"Regrettably, your application to join PCLinuxOS-Forums has been rejected.

Regards,
The PCLinuxOS-Forums Team."

Because I haven't done anything wrong to them (AFAIK), I find this disgraceful to say the least.

Are you going to ask why? I can for you, if it's bothering you this much. I suspect someone made a mistake.

How do I ask if I am not a member?
And why use such a silly procedure anyway?

You can ask for me if you want, and possibly link this mini review in their forum.

Will do.

Sorry for the double post, but they're looking in to it.

You ask me. I'm the one that sent the reject email. The hope was that you would respond, and then be approved. When checking against a forum spammers database, Alessandro, followed by many different numbers, came up many times. Rather than instigate a ban, the reject letter was sent, to see if you were real, or a bot.


You seem to be very real, so come on back, try again, and I'll make sure you are approved, and properly welcomed. Sorry about the mix up, but the spammers have been hitting us pretty hard again, and we're trying to be careful about who gets in.

Ok, you are forgiven

In fact I am the only, original Alessandro17

(Many followed after me)

I'll try again and change my signature.

Don't do that, I won't know who to look for!

I just managed to log in

changturkey

I realize I haven't thanked you anywhere.

Thanks very much

PC LinuxOS is a good and balanced OS, but, as all the things of this world, not perfect.

The perfect OS is not of this world (perhaps the Borg OS)

Giorgio

"Perfect" on Earth is somebody or something which fulfills (almost) all our expectations.
E.G. when I bought my car it was perfect for my needs.

PCLinux OS (I have tried it on 2 PC) is a good Linux Distribution.

I have only a problem: I have a Wireless USB network card Sitecom 300N, perfectly recognized and installed; I have created a DSL connection, and all works fine, but when I reboot, internet works only typing by terminal: sudo route add default ppp0

I have added the command in rc.local, but without success.

Can you help me? Thanks in advance

I apologize for my bad english.

Giorgio

Right on. "Perfect" is just a point of view.

I will give this great sounding distro a chance.
Thanks for the tip, Ale!

You are always welcome, hecker



Hi Giorgio

I don't want to sound unkind, but I am sure in their forum they'll be able to help better than me

What is the future for PCLinuxOS.......see here.....

I just read that (but not everything yet).
At the end of the day, if Texstar is in good health and he manages to keep a team of developers together (others might come if the present ones go away), there is no reason why PCLinuxOS shouldn't have a future.
I hope everybody has learnt from the Kanotix/Sidux experience.
To those who mantain that Sidux is a good outcome from the split, my answer is simple: there must be a reason if Sidux is hardly ever in the top 20 at DistroWatch.

PCLinuxOS 2009.2 is out today. It's my favourite distro of the 10 or so I've tried so far..

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pclinuxos

Can i get some help,please ?
I wanna enable " use sub-pixel hinting " but i can't check it.
How could i fix that ?
And by the way : if i wanna install some programs,do i have to use the synaptic package manager ?
For example,i wanna install wine or wine doors.
I open synaptic package manager,and select it from there ?
Please help me,i'm a n00b.
Thanks in advance.

I don't know about the sub-pixel hinting thing. In fact I've never seen that setting before.

Synaptic is definitely the way to install software. Generally if there is a linux app you want to try, use the search in synaptic and it's usally there. Sometimes it's an older version but it will be stable. If there are other dependencies it will notify you and install them as well.