Random Thoughts on PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS is my first rolling-release distro. That’s a little scary for a newbie coming from the Ubuntu-LTS-based world. What really ticks me off about the Ubuntu-based distros lately is their long-standing habit of sneaking Beta software into updates – even updates of their LTS versions which are supposed to be more stable. Making unwitting Beta-testers out of Linux novices is just unforgivable. Only Linux Mint users and Linux Lite users who take advantage of a modified updater created for Linux Lite (but not officially supported by the distro) avoid most of the issues because of the brilliant Mint Updater.

I have had absolutely no update issues with with my very minimal PCLOS/Xfce mixture, but I must admit, reading the forums lately has me a little spooked. It’s probably normal when there are huge, major, fundamental changes to a major component of the system, like the changes from KDE4 to KDE5. KDE is the default, flagship edition of PCLinuxOS, and it’s going through some maaaaaaajor changes with the big KDE updates to Plasma 5.

It’s got a lot of fancy stuff in it! And a lot of dependencies that I don’t have in my minimalistic, super-simple Xfce mixture. Like PulseAudio, for example. Firefox users have to put up with PA because Firefox now depends on PulseAudio, but I don’t (yay for Midori and Seamonkey!). PulseAudio was Beta when it first got pushed on Ubuntu-based distros aimed at Linux novices, and for as long as I could, I removed it from my Xubuntu and relied on good ol’ ALSA, until it was no longer possible to avoid. Nowadays it’s Grub2 (beta) being pushed on Linux newbies from Ubuntu. Unforflippingivable. In PCLinuxOS Grub 2 is only being used by testers, and updates will not impose it on the rest of us until it has proven itself safe.

I do hafta say, though, if the big changes in KDE are somehow getting past even the PCLOS testers and causing so many “broken after update” issues – again probably to be expected with such a major release of such a major component – maybe new users should stick to the Xfce or Mate community editions of PCLinuxOS until things settle down with KDE.