DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 707, 10 April 2017

Feature Story (by Jesse Smith)

PCLinuxOS 2017.03



It has been about a year since I last explored the PCLinuxOS distribution. At that time I was experimenting with the project's MATE edition. Since I have not taken the chance to try PCLinuxOS since the distribution launched an edition with the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment, I thought it would be fun to revisit this project. PCLinuxOS currently ships with version 5.8 of the Plasma desktop which is a long term support release of Plasma. The ISO file I downloaded for PCLinuxOS was 1.3GB in size.



Booting from the distribution's live media brings up a menu asking how we would like to launch the operating system. We can choose to launch PCLinuxOS with a graphical desktop with the default settings, load the desktop with safe mode graphics settings, boot to a text console or launch the project's system installer. Taking one of the live desktop options soon brings up a window asking us to select our keyboard's layout from a list. Then the Plasma desktop loads. PCLinuxOS has a varied and colourful wallpaper. There are icons on the desktop which open the Dolphin file manager and launch the system installer. At the bottom of the screen we find a panel which houses the application menu, a few quick-launch buttons, a task switcher and the system tray.



Installing



After confirming that the distribution could run in my test environments, I opened the system installer. PCLinuxOS uses a graphical installer which gently guides us through the steps required to get the distribution on our hard drive. We begin with disk partitioning and PCLinuxOS offers to automatically partition our hard drive for us or let us manually divide up our disk. The distribution supports working with ext2/3/4, Btrfs, XFS and JFS file systems as well as LVM and RAID configurations. I found the partition manager to be fairly flexible and easy to navigate. There are a lot of options in the installer, but many of the installer's features are tucked away and only shown if we specifically request Expert or Advanced options.



The installer next offers to remove unneeded software packages from the system. For example, I do not have an NVIDIA video card and the PCLinuxOS installer offers to remove NVIDIA driver packages to free up space. The installer then copies its files to the hard drive. A few minutes later the installer asks which boot loader (LILO, GRUB Legacy or GRUB2) we would like to install and what, if any, special options we would like the operating system to use when it boots. At this point we are finished with the installer and can reboot to start using our brand new copy of PCLinuxOS.



The first time our pristine operating system boots a graphical wizard appears and walks us through a few final configuration steps. We are asked to select our time zone list from a list and we have the option of using network time synchronization or manually setting our computer's clock. We are then asked to make up a password for our system administrator's account and create a regular user account for ourselves. Once these steps have been completed we are presented with a graphical login screen.



First impressions



Signing into our account brings up the Plasma 5.8 desktop environment. Though Plasma took a while to launch on my systems, once the desktop environment had finished loading the environment was responsive and I experienced no lag or delays. The default desktop theme is fairly bright and offers a variety colours. I found the theme allowed for a good deal of contrast without being visually distracting.





PCLinuxOS 2017.03 -- The Plasma application menu

(full image size: 334kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



For people who do not enjoy the default look and feel of the Plasma desktop, we can adjust most aspects of the desktop environment through the KDE System Settings panel. This configuration panel provides modules for adjusting the desktop's theme, notifications and media support as well as features like file indexing and pairing the desktop with Android phones via KDE Connect. The settings panel is fairly easy to navigate and offers users a search function to help us find the specific option we want to change.



Hardware



I tried running PCLinuxOS in two test environments, experimenting with the distribution in VirtualBox and on a desktop computer. I found PCLinuxOS was unable to integrate with the VirtualBox environment and therefore I could not make full use of my computer's screen resolution. The distribution does not provide guest modules for VirtualBox environments in its software repositories and the generic VirtualBox modules failed to install on the distribution. I tried installing VirtualBox using a script supplied by the distribution. While this successfully installed the VirtualBox software, it did not provide me with a working guest module. Apart from the poor desktop resolution, PCLinuxOS worked well in VirtualBox. The operating system was responsive, connected to the network and was able to play sound out of the box.



When I started playing with PCLinuxOS on a desktop computer, I ran into a few problems while using the live disc. One issue was that applications could not play sound. My audio volumes (both the PulseAudio and ALSA volumes) were turned up their maximum settings, but I could not get applications to produce sound. I eventually found I could get sound from my speakers by muting and then un-muting the PulseAudio controls. I ran into another problem with the system clock. When NTP time synchronization was enabled and my correct time zone set, PCLinuxOS's clock displayed a time that was off by six hours. Disabling network time synchronization and manually setting the correct time worked around the issue. Both of these problems only appeared when working from the live disc, once the distribution was installed these problems disappeared.





PCLinuxOS 2017.03 -- Adding a printer to the system

(full image size: 141kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



PCLinuxOS was slow to boot in both test environments compared to other mainstream distributions and the Plasma desktop was slow to load. However, I got good performance out of the distribution once the Plasma desktop had finished loading. The desktop and applications were quick to respond. I was pleased to find the distribution properly detected my network printer. During my trial PCLinuxOS and its applications were stable and I encountered no crashes. In either test environment PCLinuxOS required about 420MB of RAM to sign into the Plasma desktop.



Applications



The Plasma edition of PCLinuxOS ships with a lot of software. While many of the default applications are Qt/KDE programs, many others are not and I like that the distribution places more focus on providing good tools than providing a pure Qt environment. The distribution ships with Firefox (with Flash support), LibreOffice 5, the Thunderbird e-mail client, the KeePassX password manager and the Pidgin chat client. There are remote desktop viewers, the Choqok micro-blogger, a couple of text editors and a DropBox client. PCLinuxOS ships with an application called Master PDF Editor which makes it easy to edit PDF documents. The Master PDF Editor is free to use for non-commercial purposes, but is provided under a proprietary license. The distribution also ships with the qBittorrent application for downloading and uploading torrents, the Krita drawing program and the BleachBit software for cleaning up temporary files. PCLinuxOS ships with the Dolphin file manager, a process monitor and a live radio streaming client. The distribution also supplies us with the VLC media player, the Kdenlive video editor and the Vokoscreen Recorder. To compliment these multimedia applications the distribution ships with a collection of media codecs so we can play most media files. In the background we find Java, the GNU Compiler Collection, version 4.9.2, and the SysV init software. At the time of writing the distribution runs on version 4.9 of the Linux kernel.





PCLinuxOS 2017.03 -- Cleaning up old files with BleachBit

(full image size: 308kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



Several of the items in the application menu have names which may seem cryptic. In particular I noticed some names like zuluCrypt, MKVToolNix and DeadBeeF scattered through the menu and these are harder to intuit than something like LibreOffice Writer. For people who would like hints as to what these applications do, we can right-click on the application menu and enable program descriptions in the menu's settings. For those of you who are interested, zuluCrypt is a desktop application for encrypting and decrypting files as well as working with encrypted volumes. The zuluCrypt interface is fairly friendly, even for people new to working with encrypted files. DeadBeeF is a simple audio player for listening to music files. MKVToolNix website's contains a blurb which says MKVToolNix can "create, alter and inspect Matroska media files" but I was able to find little else to explain the practical workings of the utility.



I noticed a few applications included with PCLinuxOS do not include documentation. Launching MyLiveGTK or DeadBeeF and selecting items from their Help menus results in an error being displayed that reports the documentation is not available. When running the Click Radio audio streaming application I found clicking the application's About button caused the application to drop the audio stream while it looked for the requested information.



One last application I would like to highlight is MyLiveUSB. This program, and its friendly front-end MyLiveGTK, assist us in making a copy of our live operating system and transferring it to a USB thumb drive. I think this is a handy tool as it makes it easier to take an operating system with us or backup our configuration.



Software management



The distribution does not tell us when new software updates are available, we are left to check for new updates ourselves using the Synaptic graphical package manager. Alternatively we can use the apt-get command line package manager. Synaptic is a tried and true package manager which simply presents us with a list of available software and provides us with a search function to find programs based on a name or description. We can check a box next to any packages we wish to install or remove. There is also a handy button which will queue any available upgrades for installation. PCLinuxOS is a rolling release distribution which means we can expect a fairly steady stream of new package versions. During the week I was running the distribution I upgraded 34 packages, requiring about 33MB of downloads. Something I found interesting about Synaptic was the package manager did not, by default, check packages' signatures to guard against corrupted downloads. It is a feature we can enable though if we want the added security.





PCLinuxOS 2017.03 -- The Synaptic package manager

(full image size: 222kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



Control Centre



One of the best features I think PCLinuxOS has to offer is the distribution's Control Centre. This control panel, which is shared by other distributions in the Mandriva/Mageia family of operating systems, provides the administrator with many useful configuration tools. The Control Centre divides its tools into categories such as Software, Security and Boot. Each category contains modules we can launch which provide us with friendly graphical interfaces for changing settings. The Control Centre makes it easy to do anything from simply launching the Synaptic package manager to setting up a web server to configuring network services such as DHCP, NTP and OpenSSH. We can also browse hardware information, configure the display server, set up printers and share our files over NFS and Samba shares. The Control Centre contains modules for configuring the distribution's firewall, managing user accounts, setting the system time and enabling automatic logins.





PCLinuxOS 2017.03 -- The Control Centre and KDE System Settings panels

(full image size: 294kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)



I like the Control Centre as it makes a lot of administrative tasks straight forward and the modules generally provide clear explanations and options. Though I did run into one minor issue when using the OpenSSH module. The first time I went through the module to enable the secure shell service I took the defaults and was unable to connect to the service. I confirmed, using the Control Centre services module, that OpenSSH was running, but it was not accepting connections. I later found the OpenSSH module had incorrectly detected my IP address and caused the OpenSSH service to ignore incoming connections to my real address. Walking through the OpenSSH module and manually specifying my computer's proper IP address fixed the issue.



Conclusions



PCLinuxOS is fairly easy to set up, offers good performance and includes a wide range of software. I generally enjoyed using the Plasma 5.8 desktop and the System Settings panel makes it easy to customize the Plasma environment. I very much enjoyed working with the Control Centre as it makes tasks like setting up network shares or working with the firewall easy. In short, there is a lot about PCLinuxOS that I enjoyed.



However, I did run into several minor problems. Nothing show stopping, but a handful of "papercut" style issues that bothered me. For example, PCLinuxOS makes it easy to install VirtualBox, but not to get working VirtualBox guest modules. When running the live environment on my desktop computer I had trouble with sound and network time synchronization. A few programs were missing their documentation files and I ran into an error while setting up secure shell access. None of these items are big issues in themselves, but when combined they suggest to me that not enough people are testing the distribution and reporting issues to the developers.



In general though what stood out about PCLinuxOS was the distribution provides a rolling release platform that receives regular updates, while also providing a relatively conservative environment. Most distributions either stick with a static, point release system or offer a rolling release with cutting edge packages. PCLinuxOS seems to be finding a pleasant middle ground where core components and the layout of the desktop are conservative while the desktop applications are the latest and greatest. I like the balance that is achieved between providing a traditional environment and newer applications. * * * * * Hardware used in this review



My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU

Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive

Memory: 6GB of RAM

Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card

Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card * * * * * Visitor supplied rating



PCLinuxOS has a visitor supplied average rating of: 8.9/10 from 270 review(s).

Have you used PCLinuxOS? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.





Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith)

Canonical pulls the plug on Unity 8 and convergence, Tanglu seeks additional developers, Chakra's infrastructure changes, OpenBSD on the Raspberry Pi



In a surprise announcement, a blog post attributed to Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth claims the Canonical-sponsored distribution will shift its default desktop environment from Unity 8 to GNOME for the next long term support (LTS) release. " I'm writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity 8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I'd like to emphasize our ongoing passion for, investment in, and commitment to, the Ubuntu desktop that millions rely on. We will continue to produce the most usable open source desktop in the world, to maintain the existing LTS releases, to work with our commercial partners to distribute that desktop, to support our corporate customers who rely on it, and to delight the millions of IoT and cloud developers who innovate on top of it. " The change in focus likely means development of the Unity 8 desktop environment, and related technologies such as Mir and Ubuntu Phone, will no longer be sponsored by Canonical. At the time of writing, it is unclear what effect this will have on related community projects such as Ubuntu GNOME and UBports. Since the announcement, a fork of Canonical's Unity 8 desktop has been created at Unity8.org with the source code available through GitHub. The UBports team has also responded to the news with plans to continue porting Ubuntu to Android mobile devices. * * * * * A blog post on Planet Tanglu seems to indicate the Debian-based distribution is struggling due to a lack of interested developers. Matthias Klumpp posted an overview of the project and its history and reported that he no longer has as much time to spend on the Tanglu project. The post echoes the message of many Linux distributions facing the strains of maintaining a large project with few developers and limited resources: " So, what actually is the way forward? First, maybe I have the chance to find a few people willing to work on tasks in Tanglu. It's a fun project, and I learned a lot while working on it. Tanglu also possesses some unique properties few other Debian derivatives have, like being built from source completely (allowing us things like swapping core components or compiling with more hardening flags, switching to newer KDE Plasma and GNOME faster, etc.). Second, if we do not have enough manpower, I think converting Tanglu into a rolling-release distribution might be the only viable way to keep the project running. A rolling release scheme creates much less effort for us than making releases (especially time-based ones!). That way, users will have a constantly updated and secure Tanglu system with machines doing most of the background work. If it turns out that absolutely nothing works and we can't attract new people to help with Tanglu, it would mean that there generally isn't much interest from the developer or user side in a project like this, so shutting it down or scaling it down dramatically would be the only option. " * * * * * The Chakra GNU/Linux project is overhauling some of its infrastructure, introducing hardware and networking enhancements to the distribution's build servers. The project is also rolling out some automation on the backend to improve the development process. There are some changes in the works for Chakra's end users too, including package signing and a new community forum: " totte introduced our new forum software, a closed beta for which is already running on community.chakralinux.org. We plan to use this as a replacement of our current forum, mailing list, wiki and news tools and we hope to soon make it available to everyone. totte has also already setup Gitlab, but we still need to migrate pending bug reports before we officially switch to it to host our code and issue-tracker. Samir (Ram-Z), Chaoting (brli) and Luca (AlmAck) are working on finalizing package signing on both our local build systems and on Chakra's build server. This is important in order to improve the security of our packages and repositories. " Details on these changes and more can be found in the project's news update. * * * * * The Raspberry Pi is a minimal, single board computer which has proved popular among hobbyists and in educational settings. The Pi's minimal resources are well suited to efficient operating systems that can be customized to the Pi's hardware. Ian Darwin has been working on getting OpenBSD running on the Raspberry Pi 3 computer. " The Raspberry Pi computers are interesting in their own way: intending to bring low-cost computing to everybody, they take shortcuts and omit things that you'd expect on a laptop or desktop. They aren't too bright on their own: there's very little smarts in the board compared to the "BIOS" and later firmwares on conventional systems. Some of the "smarts" are only available as binary files. This was part of the reason that our favorite OS never came to the Pi Party for the original RPi, and didn't quite arrive for the RPi2. With the RPi3, though, there is enough availability that our devs were able to make it boot. Some limitations remain, though: if you want to build your own full release, you have to install the dedicated raspberrypi-firmware package from the ports tree. And, the boot disks have to have several extra files on them - this is set up on the install sets, but you should be careful not to mess with these extra files until you know what you're doing! " Details on Darwin's experiment can be found in this post. * * * * * These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.





Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith)

Setting up VPN connections



Hiding-my-connection asks: I have been hearing a lot about VPNs and using them to hide my web browsing habits from ISPs. What are some good tips for using a VPN and how to set one up?



DistroWatch answers: A virtual private network, or VPN, provides a method by which computers can talk to each other over the Internet as though they were on the same local network. This feature is often used to treat a remote computer as our gateway to the Internet. Instead of our Internet traffic leaving our computer and going out into the world directly, our network connection effectively goes out to the VPN server and, from there, goes out into the world. This makes it look like the remote computer is where our network traffic is coming from. The VPN acts as a sort of proxy or gateway between us and the rest of the Internet.



Since it looks like our network traffic is coming from the VPN server and the server can be anywhere in the world, a VPN connection is often used to get around censorship or region limitations placed on on-line media. A connection to a VPN server is usually encrypted to prevent people from being able to see what it is we are sending or receiving between our local computer and the VPN server. Because the traffic between our computer and the VPN server is encrypted, VPNs are sometimes used to hide communications when we are connecting over an insecure network.



Recently, policy changes in the United States of America have made people want to shield their network traffic from the eyes of their Internet service providers (ISPs) to avoid having information about their web browsing habits sold. While a VPN can hide some of the specifics of what a person is doing on-line, using a VPN is not a perfect solution for Internet privacy. Connecting to websites over a VPN may hide the specifics of what we are doing from our local ISP, but it passes the privacy issue further down the line. Now the VPN provider and the VPN's ISP will see which websites we are visiting and when. The issue is shifted more than solved because now we need to trust the VPN to keep our secrets.



A VPN certainly has its uses, such as getting around censorship or protecting network traffic on an open network, but VPNs also have their limits. When trying to avoid being monitored by your ISP it makes sense to look for a VPN provider you can trust to not track the traffic moving through their servers. There is a chart comparing VPN providers and their features on That One Privacy Site which may be useful for people shopping for a VPN.



Another thing to consider is much of the time, when people are on-line, they sign into websites. People often log into places like their bank, Facebook, Twitter, Google and so on. These websites may also use methods to track their visitors. Using a VPN or other anonymizing service and then logging into a website largely removes the user's anonymity.



As for how to set up a VPN, that may vary depending on which VPN provider you decide to use. Your provider should offer basic set up instructions to enable the VPN once you have an account with them. There are a few common types of VPNs, one is OpenVPN which is particularly popular in the open source community. The Linux.com website has instructions for setting up connections to an OpenVPN server using a variety of methods. A second method, which has been around for a while, uses the Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol (PPTP). PPTP connections are supported by Network Manager on most Linux distributions and can be enabled by adding a VPN connection in Network Manager.



Another approach to maintaining on-line privacy would be to use Tor. The Tor Project uses methods to safeguard traffic which are similar in many ways to VPNs, but with more effort put into anonymizing network traffic. It is fairly easy to set up Tor, the service is free to use and it will offer many of the same benefits as a VPN. Tor connections tend to be a bit slower than premium VPN services, but can be used with similar effectiveness. * * * * * These and other answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.





Released Last Week

Torrent Corner

Upcoming Releases and Announcements

Opinion Poll

Using a VPN or Tor



This week, in our Questions and Answers column we talked about virtual private networks (VPNs) and Tor. Both are often used to protect a user's privacy when browsing the web. We would like to find out how many of our readers use these technologies on a regular basis in an effort to get around region blocking, for privacy purposes or to work around censorship. Feel free to share your experiences using VPNs and Tor in the comments.



You can see the results of our previous poll on methods for removing old or temporary files in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.



Using a VPN or Tor

I use a free VPN I pay for a VPN I use Tor I use both a VPN and Tor I do not use a VPN or TOR

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