Did anyone tried PCQuest Linux 2005??

Hi

did anyone tried PCQ Linux 2005. some one pls give a review. is it a one cd installation ??

F

I just got a copy of the magazine . If Im correct there are 3 cds for PCQ Linux 2005. Im going to give it a try pretty soon.

P

Its based on FC3 and since FC3 is quite "old" nothing new is expected. so i personally am not too much inclined to try it.

Am waiting for Ubuntu's next release to happen. PCQLinux does not matter too much to me

Maybe tuxfan can write a short review for pcqlinux since he uses it for his day to day uses..

D

Ya Tux

if u r listining then give us a nice review

I bought the magazine today. and yes it is a 3 CD distro. i m going to install it on saturday or sunday.

if FC3 is older then which one is newer??

i dont know about the KDE version used in PCQ 2005. but it should be 3.3.x (there is no major release since then as far as i know). So i dont think it is older.

They customized many things - courtesy the PC quest magazine

P

Well the new stuff about fedora is fedora 4 thats about to hit us shortly here is there schedule.

14 Mar test1
30 March String change deadline (data provided)
11 April test2, string build freeze (builds completed)
27 April Translation deadline (data provided)
test3 devel freeze
9 May test3, translation build freeze (builds completed)
... Continual freeze, only critical bugs fixed until release
23 May Absolute devel freeze
6 June Release open, announced

*fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/

Well!! I installed PCQ Linux 2005 today

The installation comes in 3 CDs. Their customization is good. They provide several types of installation (12 +). And it can be used for Grid Computing. All packages are arranged in a very neat format.
There r so many pgms for a developer including Eclipse & JAVA.

Pluses:
Increased booting speed than normal FC3
NTFS support (just mount the drive)
Mplayer (Plays all medias - i installed the skins came with Digit DVD and it looks like Power DVD)
Acrobat 5 is bundled
JAVA J2RE,J2ME,J2SE,Eclipse
WINE & other tools are included
i tried many windows applications & games. and all worked perfectly. But Word2003 crashed.
PHPBB is bundled (u can run a forum in ur intranet)
Linux Network Neighbour hood - Similar to Windows
There are also other packages included by the PCQ team.

Minus:
Flash is not supported. so i couldnt open Digit DVD in Firefox or anyother browser

in my opinion PCQ Linux 2005 is really better than the uncustomized FC3. (Atleast in my system).
the system is more faster. My Creative Live! works more perfectly than in FC3. NTFS is supported. with WINE i can try several windows applications. Mplayer can play almost all video & audio files. i checked DivX, DVD,Real media etc. all worked perfectly. So if i can find a good driver for my Creative internal modem then i dont need Windows (may be for playing games- agreed) .

So if i can find a good driver for my Creative internal modem then i dont need Windows (may be for playing games- agreed) .

That is so nice to hear.. keep it up..
PCQlinux team does a good job of customisation. The 2 regular queries of Fedora newcomers is NTFS support and MP3 support .. And both of these have been fixed.

I was eagerly waiting for the CDs, but the first two of them failed the media test and therefore I haven't installed it

Have written to PCQ and I am waiting for a replacement

A

not a gud experience 4 me.......... check this out to know why>>>>>>>> *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16240

O

I installed pcqlinux2005 yesterday ,

It looks nice and has a good color scheme - customised by pcq, many of the references to fedora core 3 havve been removed and pcq linux put in its place.

It looks like the pcq team didnot spend too much time on rmeoving all the fedora references or felt it was a pointless exercise. So its more of a customised FC# rather than a totally new distro.

On a good point, most of the software they have added such as j2sdk, acrobat reader, video and audio tools are useful to have.

On a bad note most of the fedora core bugs are still there too. Such as udev interfering with the nvidia driver module so that you cant load nvidia after you restart post install(of the nvidia binary driver). well i would have expected atleast this to be fixed.

RHGB also doens't work properly once the nvdia driver is installed.

I always felt that it should take more than two months to put out a linux distro. These are not toys, a lot of work is involved and buggy releases only make linux in general look bad.

Well i guess thats when i ran short of my patience and switched back to slack 10.1. its running the way i want it to and thats a lot of work guys.

I guess you could make any distro work as you want it to, but then its easiest for me on slackware.

A

tuxfan said:
I was eagerly waiting for the CDs, but the first two of them failed the media test and therefore I haven't installed it Have written to PCQ and I am waiting for a replacement

The same happened with me.
@#$#%E%&E%&E&&&&*
Hoping PCQ will replace it soon.

how sad!!!

But i didnt care to check the media. i just installed.
"fortune favours the brave"

N

Havenâ€™t tried it personally I donâ€™t like the all FCx stuff, it is always in beta and they (Red Hat) used it as test device to release final RHEL I like ubuntu much it is really open and quite stable tooâ€¦ your personal choice may very for PC

K

@tuxfan : which cd gave u the error in media test ??? i had the same trouble with an old pcqlin version . try copying the files from that cd to hdd , if that works , just go ahead with the install . i installed a pcqlin a while back even though media test failed . plus i install with the "everything" option checked , so there might not be a real problem with the cd

Well, I have already written to PCQ for replacement and usually, they do it promptly. Today I already got a reply from them promising to do something about it in 3 working days. Lets see.

And my HDD doesn't have space for 3 CDs :shock:

Its full of lots of other stuff

P

I would suggest that do not do a media check just install it works. The same thing happened to me with FC3 and i said install everything and had no problems. Give it a try.

i too have same opinion. try it tux_fan.

Ok guys. Thanks for the info. I will install it as soon as I can.

Little busy in accounting

pradeep_chauhan said:
I would suggest that do not do a media check just install it works. The same thing happened to me with FC3 and i said install everything and had no problems. Give it a try.

Thats very true, when i tested the media while installing FC3 it rejected each one of them but got installed by those very cds.

yes!!! most of them run the media check and resulted in error. But no error in installation. Then what is the need for the media check? whose fault it is?

Media check reads the MD5sums file present on the CD and compares the MD5 sum of all the files present on the CD with the ones listed on the file. Sometimes due to faulty CD rom, that MD5sum is not calculated properly, hence that error. Probably the file on cd might be corrupt, but then its possible that the Fedora install did not install that file on your system

G

PCQLINUX 2005 contains some flaws , do't try it

P

What Flaws please educate us.

Yes grub (what a nickname

) u ve to tell us what r the flaws. there was some bug in the udev (u couldn't play a dvd movie by just selecting the dvd - there were no links to the /dev/dvd) and someone (really thanks for him) here mentioned it and adviced us how to avoid it (just install the new udev*.rpm). So like that tell us the flaws.

G

if u have FC3 and u have network running with ur computer , then install it and instantly u will come to know , what aabout i am talking

grub said:
if u have FC3 and u have network running with ur computer , then install it and instantly u will come to know , what aabout i am talking

Why do you want us to go thru the ordeal you went thru? Just tell us what happens.

P

Yes i have FC3 running with a network consisting of three PC and a ADSL modem from BSNL(Data One) and i have no problems whatsoever. Come on dont pill. FC3 is a good stable distro no problems whatso ever. The only minus it has is that its a bit bloated (so am I) So what.

Umm, just one quick question. I happen to be running FC3 on one machine, Ubuntu on another and Mandrake 10.1 on another. I got the PCQlin2k5 CDs and I am sitting on them, should I or shouldn't I? In case I should, which one should I wipe out, you think? Plus, is it worth wiping any one installation out for this distro?

P

I suggest as you are using FC3 do not touch PCQ you will not get any thing new i am sure you already have mp3 and ntfs support. Wait for a few days(monts) let FC4 come out then upgrade FC3 to 4 there is absolutly no point in wasting time over PCQ.

Installing & uninstalling linux is not a problem. bcoz everything u installed in ur system will be there when it is reinstalled. So i do it very often. nothing is going to lose. (Also even if u 've some data it should be on the /home. So just don't format that partition. -ofcourse u should 've to use a seperate partition for /home). So i suggest u should try it. it will be lighter than FC3. So i suggest u to replace FC3 with PCQ linux.

Nah, I have mp3 and NTFS support on FC3, so I think I will just wait for FC4 like pradeep said. Plus, its only until June that I have to wait. I dont particularly feel like using PCQlin2k5 right now. Who needs grid computing and supercomputing modules?

N

pradeep_chauhan said:
Its based on FC3 and since FC3 is quite "old" nothing new is expected. so i personally am not too much inclined to try it.

Well i tried but totally based on fedora3.just some softwares added and a preety Fame Name "PCQ"
I should name Its Copy Of fedora3!!
Lol

neerajvohra said:
Well i tried but totally based on fedora3.just some softwares added and a preety Fame Name "PCQ"
I should name Its Copy Of fedora3!!
Lol

Of course, it is based on FC. Even PCQ don't hide it and they had conducted a poll wherein more people wanted for Fedora than Debian. Actually, PCQ people wanted to let it remain Fedora (or Red Hat). But Red Hat people didn't allow them to do it. They were compelled to rename it. Its based on Fedora so no wonder it will have loads and loads of similarity.

But there is quite a bit of customisation as well, albeit under the hood and may not be too visible. But their effort is commendable!! They run a magazine and are not a software house. They go thru the effort and bundle a distro and also regularly provide support!! And that too for free!

D

Ya i totaly agree tuxfan

of course if they r saying this that this is based on FC3 that why to tell this thing,

and one more thing they r still doing some work of their own to make linux under the reach of each & every one so pls.. mind it

P

Guys we must give credit where its due. PCQ is the first magazine/source of information about linux. It gave us linux when only a handfull people knew about its existance. Today too its the largest way that people get there linux cd to try out the new flavors. In this respect hats off to these great guys.

I installed (upgraded) PCQ Linux 2005 y'day in one of my machines. There's hardly any apprent difference. But my USB card reader got immediately recognised

Thats good!! Now I will try my USB printer and scanner too. Then next on agenda is the internal modem.

I will have to do little bit of R&D to see what more is new

tuxfan said:
I installed (upgraded) PCQ Linux 2005....I will have to do little bit of R&D to see what more is new

yes, I can remember when me, tuxfan and others used to playing around with the previous version of pcqlinux for some extra features... that wxperience was good. Now with this new version, one thing is best ... most of the appz are already included and thus saved lotta bandwidth ... otherwise we need to downlod those ..

btw i am sure Tuxfan will come up with more results after his R&D ..

a.m

Yes, I surely hope to come with some things that would increase my efficiency.

now i ve installed nvidia driver also. and 3d desktop switching tool is fun. i ve shown it to some of my frineds and they also want to install PCQ linux 2005 on their system. In my experience it is faster than FC3. and pls dont blame PCQuest. they 've done their best to tweak FC3.
tuxfan.. v r waiting for ur review.

Sound drivers were working in PCQL 2004, they are not working in PCQL 2005

Thats the first thing that I will have to sort out.

tuxfan, is your soundcard detected atleast?

B

pradeep_chauhan said:
Guys we must give credit where its due. PCQ is the first magazine/source of information about linux. It gave us linux when only a handfull people knew about its existance. Today too its the largest way that people get there linux cd to try out the new flavors. In this respect hats off to these great guys.

yeps my linux life started with PCQ Linux 7.1

. I think to a greater extent PCQ was responsible for the Linux revolution (or is there

) in India. There were the first one (as far as I know) to give a free lunch of Linux.

This one's for me man! As I am a die hard fan of PCQ, I have installed PCQ and currently facing no problems of any kind...

Some guys were saying that PCQ has nothing to offer more than FC3 but I think thats OK......

moreover I think they are providing some modules more wich are not present in FC3

GNUrag said:
tuxfan, is your soundcard detected atleast?

I think it is detected. It tries to play the sample sound but I don't hear anything

Didn't have time to see what's wrong. Hope to do it today. Any help will be highly appreciated

P

Realy a very dumb thing to ask have you unmuted your sound controlls and increase the volume in alsamixer. yuo know one tends to over look this small thing.

pradeep_chauhan said:
Realy a very dumb thing to ask have you unmuted your sound controlls and increase the volume in alsamixer. yuo know one tends to over look this small thing.

I guess, there is only one person who is intelligent here. And thats Mr. Pradeep Chauhan

The rest all are fools. Right Mr. Chauhan?

No question is too dumb, only thing is that they are easiest to answer for someone who already has the answer. No one is born with all the required knowledge, including YOU and me! We acquire it as time passes.

Anyway, I will also see the volume in alsamixer as very curtly suggested by the fellow brainiac. But, this is the error that I got while trying to run sndconfig

You don't seem to be running a kernel with modular sound enabled. (soundcore.o was not found in the module search path). To use sndconfig, you must be running a kernel with modular sound, such as the kernel shipped with Red Hat Linux or a 2.2 or greater kernel

P

Come on I meant its a dumb thing on my part to ask such a simple (as obviously you would have done this) Question Please At no point was i meaning something else and I am realy sorry if i have offened you.

Sorry, I misunderstood. Peace, peace.

A

I think one credit that must be given to PCQLinux 2k5 is that it recognizes hardware immediatly, unlike some of other Linux that I tried. I think all in all a very gud effort by PCQ team,must give them credit.

tuxfan! which sound card do u've?

:roll: I don't know what I did, but it has started working. I checked alsamixer, it wasn't muted. I tried sndconfig, it gave me an error. I don't know what was wrong and what I did

I sound so stupid, but it has started working while I was fiddling around with some settings in control centre