5. KDE 4.x on a diet is always a good thing and Texstar's MiniMe product is a great example of a judiciously put together KDE distribution. There are KDE Desktop Activity modules included with the release (standard KDE4.x fare) plus PulseAudio for occasions when buggy Kmix goes berserk on hardware.
And then there's Synaptic Package Manager for everything else. Unlike other lightweight distributions PCLinuxOS KDE Mini Me really is trim. Even the Network menu has only three items - KNetAttach, Konqueror and KPPP. In contrast, openSUSE KDE has 6 or more.
6. Comparing PCLinuxOS Control Center and Mageia Control Center would make for an interesting article. They have more in common beyond the interface, but look a little deeper and users will notice deep customizations. Network Center, of course, is more stable now than it was in Mandriva 2010 thanks to an updated Linux kernel. Sharing, Network Sharing and Network Services, however, is as easy to use as before.
Readers have argued that the PCLOS/Mageia/Mandriva Control Center is more powerful than openSUSE's YaST. I agree it is considerably easier to use. I even wish Windows OS would have simple utilities such as PCLOS Control Center's Hosts definitions option. PCLOS, like Mageia, makes setting up SMB, NFS and WebDAV easy for new users, which is in itself a huge accomplishment (even Ubuntu can have issues with said file sharing protocols).
One important note in using PCLOS Control Center in KDE MiniMe needs to mentioned. Almost all of the features listed require installation of software packages. This in itself is not unusual since openSUSE, Mageia and specific releases of Fedora request the same thing. Besides, most veteran users prefer to know what packages are used anyway. Configuring proxy services in PCLOS, for example, uses the popular Squid package.
With a long history, a devoted support community and a stable, consistent project, it's hard to understand why MacOSX and Windows users constantly shun Linux projects such as PCLinuxOS. After several weeks of using two releases of PCLinuxOS, it's easy to recommend both PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe and PCLinuxOS LXDE 2013.10 for home use. I hadn't touched the distribution in more than five years and coming back to it has made me realize how far Linux has evolved and improved.
Between the two, I found myself preferring the KDE MiniMe release over the LXDE versions. PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe was considerably more svelte than the LXDE release and it showed. At the end of a working day, a default installation of PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe and LXDE may look dated next to Ubuntu Unity, Linux Mint Cinnamon or a heavily customized ArchLinux desktop, but like most Linux distributions, it is never about looks. Linux thrives because of the infinite customizations and the power behind the desktop, something smug MacOSX users who deride Linux will never understand. With quality projects like PCLinuxOS running strong and healthy, Linux users will be in good hands for the next decade to come - and beyond.
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