KDE MiniMe
It's long been my belief that a lighter KDE release should be provided by the openSUSE team, openSUSE being my KDE Linux distribution of choice. PCLinuxOS has had a slim release for years through its MiniMe version, which I've never tried until now. In the last few weeks of use, PCLinuxOS 2013.10 KDE MiniMe certainly felt slimmer than Mageia 3 KDE and definitely loads and powers down faster than my own openSUSE 12.2 KDE setup.
The KDE MiniMe release of PCLinuxOS is streamlined and frugal. True to its name, the KDE MiniMe version of PCLOS retains only the fewest of KDE utilities and applications and is in stark contrast to overloaded releases from openSUSE and Kubuntu. It's very rare that I get to try out such a lightweight KDE desktop so I was very pleased. PCLOS KDE, curiously enough, even matched the performance of the PCLOS LXDE on both the Toshiba NB520 and EEEPC1000H. Moreover, I preferred the application set preinstalled on PCLOS KDE over the somewhat overloaded PCLOS LXDE. The performance was very good even on my humble hardware (in VirtualBox too).
Another plus: although PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe is QT-based, I had no problems running VLC for QT whereas I had issues running VLC on openSUSE KDE 12.2. Users who dislike Nepomuk and related modules would also be glad to know Texstar's KDE has it disabled by default and I didn't receive a single notification about any KDE service while running the system.
Feature Set
A few things of note:
1. It definitely feels odd once again seeing Synaptic Package Manager on a KDE desktop, much less a non-Debian Linux distribution after so long. Having used Mandriva/Mageia's URPMI software manager for years, I like having Synaptic around on a distribution that was once a fork of Mandriva. Also, as much as I love YaST and Zypper, Synaptic has always been more dependable despite its age (and faster too).
2. The Drakx install process has changed very little from its Mandriva years and new users to PCLinuxOS might be put off by so little changes to the setup process compared to Fedora or even Ubuntu. Still, there's a reason why little has changed - it's still far friendlier than say FreeBSD or PC-BSD or going through the much-lauded Arch Way.
3. 800x600 on the Toshiba NB520 - Like Lubuntu, Fedora and PC-BSD, PCLOS failed to detect the maximum resolution of the oddly set up video chip of the Toshiba NB520. It's no dig against against PCLOS at all. Thus far, only openSUSE was able to configure X11 properly out-of-the-box on the said netbook.
4. It's poor practice to review a Linux distribution based on its theme though other reviewers often make it a main point. Some may find PCLinuxOS's default KDE theme, with the blue abstract wallpaper and KDE3-esque appearance somewhat dated. However, PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe makes up for it through a really slim set of applications and a customized KDE built for performance. Long-time KDE users also know that almost every aspect of a KDE desktop can be tweaked without installing any other packages, so looks can be deceiving.
Concluded in PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe and LXDE 2013.10 Review Part 3
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