The Perfect Desktop - PCLinuxOS 2007

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 05/24/2007

This tutorial shows how you can set up a PCLinuxOS 2007 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

I found that PCLinuxOS is really easy to install and use, and it's a real alternative. Up to now I was thinking that Ubuntu is the best Linux desktop distribution, but I'm not so sure anymore now that I've used PCLinuxOS. I'm really impressed.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the PCLinuxOS 2007 desktop to have the following software installed:

Graphics:

• The GIMP - free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop
• F-Spot - full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop
• Google Picasa - application for organizing and editing digital photos

Internet:

• Firefox
• Opera
• Flash Player 9
• gFTP - multithreaded FTP client
• Thunderbird - email and news client
• Evolution - combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions
• aMule - P2P file sharing application
• Bittorrent client
• Azureus - Java Bittorrent client
• Kopete - multi-platform instant messaging client
• Skype
• Google Earth
• Xchat IRC - IRC client

Office:

• OpenOffice Writer - replacement for Microsoft Word
• OpenOffice Calc - replacement for Microsoft Excel
• Adobe Reader
• GnuCash - double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken
• Scribus - open source desktop publishing (DTP) application

Sound & Video:

• Amarok - audio player
• Audacity - free, open source, cross platform digital audio editor
• Banshee - audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods
• MPlayer - media player (video/audio), supports WMA
• Rhythmbox Music Player - audio player, similar to Apple's iTunes, with support for iPods
• gtkPod - software similar to Apple's iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod mini
• XMMS - audio player similar to Winamp
• dvd::rip - full featured DVD copy program
• Kino - free digital video editor
• Sound Juicer CD Extractor - CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecs
• VLC Media Player - media player (video/audio)
• Real Player
• Totem - media player (video/audio)
• Xine - media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs
• GnomeBaker - CD/DVD burning program
• K3B - CD/DVD burning program
• Multimedia-Codecs

Programming:

• Nvu- WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)
• Bluefish - text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languages
• Quanta Plus - web development environment, including a WYSIWYG editor

Other:

• VMware Server - lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows
• TrueType fonts
• Java
• Read/Write support for NTFS partitions

PCLinuxOS 2007 installs KDE (K Desktop Environment) by default.

I will use the username falko in this tutorial, and I will download all necessary files to falko's desktop which is equivalent to the directory /home/falko/Desktop. If you use another username (which you most probably do ;-)), please replace falko with your own username. So when I use a command like

cd /home/falko/Desktop

you must replace falko.

2 Installing The Base System

Download the PCLinuxOS 2007 CD iso image from http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_ionfiles&Itemid=28, burn it onto a CD, and boot your computer from it. At the boot prompt, select LiveCD:

The system boots and starts a desktop that is run entirely in the RAM of your system (the PCLinuxOS installation CD is also a Live-CD) without changing anything on your hard disk. This has the advantage that you can test how PCLinuxOS works on your hardware before you finally install it.

Select your keyboard layout:

Then select your timezone:

If you like you can enable automatic time synchronization (NTP):

Next configure your network connection. My system is in a local network, so I select Ethernet:

Select the network device you want to configure (if you have just one network device, there's not much to select ;-)):

We don't need a static IP address on a desktop computer, so it's ok to select Automatic IP (BOOTP/DHCP):

Enable Get DNS servers from DHCP and Assign host name from DHCP address:

Select Start the connection at boot. Don't select Allow users to manage the connection unless you want normal desktop users to have full control over the network settings:

Start the network connection now:

We're finished now with the network settings:

Next the login screen to our LiveCD desktop comes up. There are two logins:

• User root with the password root
• User guest with the password guest

We log in as guest:

The desktop is being initialized:

This is how the LiveCD desktop looks. Click on Install PCLinuxOS to start the installation to the hard disk: