Did PCLinuxOS Die?

[Michael]

Then it was said by some others (claiming to be part of the distro), that Ibiblio took PCLinux offline because it was eating up over half of the Ibiblio bandwidth. I asked the PCLinuxOS folks for the straight dope. The reply was: "You have enough information."

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38850

[d2kx]

PCLinuxOS is one of the few distributions I've never tried, so I thought 2 days ago, hey let's give it a try. But it was down. Sad to read that now... but with so many users, it shouldn't die that fast!?

Are there any PCLinuxOS users here who can tell me something about this distribution? What is better than in other distributions? RPM/DEB? How often have updates got released? ...

Well, I stick with Sidux and testing others now and then.

[Fragadelic]

PCLinuxOS was a decent distribution based on Mandriva. It was heavily tweaked and contained proprietary codecs and such to make using it easier. They also made the nvidia and ati drivers easily instable through Synaptic their package tool.

It used rpm packages with apt-get as the package manager so basically anyone familiar with debian would have had an easy time with this.

Texstar stopped providing updates for the 0.93 version as soon as he started working on the 0.94 or 2007 as it has become known as.

I found that as time progressed the quality of the packages was suffering and then to totally abandon 0.93 when the new one wasn't even in site for most users was not a good idea.

There also appears to have been a bit of infighting in the dev group lately not unlike gentoo and debian encountered and I'm not sure if that had antyhign to do with this.

Considering the ibiblio offered space for free and if they did in fact suck up 50% of it, then I can understand as that is not fair to all the other projects that are hosted there.

IMHO, PCLinuxOS grew enough to have their own hosting but for some reason never did.

I don't develop for PCLinuxOS but I have helped Texstar out in the past with a few things on the livecd many moons ago.

I currently volunteer with Linux Mint mainly due to my remastersys script I created and I also volunteer with Vector Linux which was the first distro I ever developed for. I mainly work on their installers and other tools related to backend config. The new vleasytables firewall tool is something that I created using a now abandoned script called EasyTables. I had to rewrite most of it and removed more than half of the original code that I found was not needed.

[d2kx]

Fragadelic, thanks for clearing thinks up for me. Seems like PCLinuxOS was an interesting distribution, even if I prefer Debian. When they continue with their work and release a new version, I will give it a try.

Again, thanks!

[Fragadelic]

It is a decent distribution for sure.

I'm not overly impressed by the fact that they said this was related to some ibiblio problem though since it seems that ibiblio dumped them before the alleged event took place.

They appear to be coming clean with it now though and that is a good thing. Hopefully they will have a new site and hosting setup very soon.

They are in the process of doing exactly that while getting test release 4 ready so they're a little busy to say the least - lol.

[Merlin W]

PCLinuxOS is anything but dead. Here's a link for you - http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php

Read the information there, and you'll see that the information posted here previously was incorrect. I'll quote from the page for you

There's a TON of (mis)information out there that is touting the demise of PCLinuxOS and other such erroneous statements. To combat this, I'm making a nice little Q&A for everyone so that they are up to date on information having to do with PCLinuxOS.

I've been in touch with Texstar and the ripper gang as well as all of those involved with the website design/administration and I can assure you 100% that PCLinuxOS is NOT dying. It is NOT going away. It is NOT gasping its last breath. So, let's get on with the Q&A:

I can't get to the PCLinuxOS Help Forum! How do I get help with my hardware/software problems?!?

The PCLinuxOS Help Forums are temporarily at http://pclossupport.forumsland.com/

Please post any help questions at this site rather than MyPCLinuxOS. Thanks for your continuing support of PCLinuxOS and please come back to MyPCLinuxOS.com to join in our community projects.

What is the big problem? How can a distro like PCLinuxOS have so many server problems?

Interesting that you should ask PCLinuxOS as you know has grown leaps and bounds since the early part of last year. The website and forums are done by volunteers from many different countries. All funding for the distribution is done through donations...that means webhosting is paid for by donations as well.

As some of you may recall, a few months ago PCLinuxOS.com had the rug pulled out from under them by their previous host and the server was shut down without warning. It was then that they began shopping around for a host. I recommended they went with my host and they did...the only problem was that a few days ago, they outgrew this host

This is a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because it means that the community is growing at a phenomenal rate. But it's a bad thing because we took down the webpage due to the increased interest. In the meantime, Tex and the gang have decided to put up a brochure type webpage with static HTML to operate as an information portal while they continue to work on PCLinuxOS 2007. Please stay tuned as Test Release 4 will be out soon followed quickly by the full release.

Please refrain from emailing Tex and the gang with requests as to what is going on. See the webpage at PCLinuxOS.com and this website for any further announcements (we'll be mirroring any new developments via the front page here).

Ok, so that explains the webpage...what about the ibiblio update server? Let's see you explain that one...

Right So, in the best time that could possibly be conceived, ibiblio had a hardware failure with one of their servers...specifically, one that has PCLinuxOS on it. From the ibiblio mailing list : "Hello everyone, The storage array holding most of our Linux distributions crashed hard. Rather than spend over $600 to resurrect 5 year-old hardware that is outof warranty and was beginning to show signs of failing prior to last night, we will be speeding up our migration of the distributions onto our new Netapp disks. This means much more space on much more stable hardware, but it will mean waiting until we hear back on a few small technical questions before we can create the volume and populate it with data. We sincerely apologize for this outage, and hope to have the volume accessible again by tomorrow."

So it's just a coincidence that ibiblio and PCLinuxOS.com went down?

Yes

Really? Are you telling us the truth?

Yes, Really. Things happen and from time to time, the planets align just right and make things happen at the same time. We're working around the clock to make things 100% again.

So, what happens next?

Next on the horizon is funding a host. It's evident that since PCLinuxOS.com quickly outgrew its host (not a bandwidth issue...it's a CPU utilization issue...we're going to need our own server) it will need to have funding for a permanent host. If you or your company would like to sponsor the project by providing hosting services for it please post your offer at the temporary forums, specifically this thread . If you'd like to donate to PCLinuxOS.com, please do so by clicking on the following link:

Donate via Amazon to PCLinuxOS.com to assist with hosting.

After a round of donations are tallied, Tex and the gang will find hosting they can move to and a revamped and optimized site will be launched. However, before any of this happens, Test Release 4 will be pushed out the door. Rest assured that Tex and the gang are working on the 2007 release and leaving the host hunting up to other members of the team.

Is the PASS repository Server still up and running for those who donate?

Up and running, 100% operational

When TR4 (Test Release 4) is released, will we be able to download it despite all the problems?

Yes. The mirrors listed on http://pclinuxos.com's static page will have TR4 and we anticipate ibiblio being up and operational soon. As always, there will be a torrent for the release as well so one way or another TR4 will make it to the masses!

So, what if my question wasn't answered here? What if I have a tidbit of information to share?

Please add your question/information to the discussion thread on this topic in the mypclinuxos.com forums. Remember that you must be a registered member of our community to post here.

PLEASE BE ADVISED, I will be updating this Q&A as further questions and more information become available. What I know, you will know...as Davecs said in an email with Tex and the gang, "That which doesn't kill you will only make you stronger " Let's use this time as a time to rally around PCLinuxOS. Make it a time where we can come to aid the distro we love by donating some loose change to help them with their hosting woes.

On behalf of the administrators of MyPCLinuxOS.com,

Devnet

It isn't hard to find the correct information. You just have to look.

Merlin

[jmiahman]

Originally Posted by Fragadelic

PCLinuxOS was a decent distribution based on Mandriva. It was heavily tweaked and contained proprietary codecs and such to make using it easier. They also made the nvidia and ati drivers easily instable through Synaptic their package tool.

It is still a decent distro, it's not dead just the site went down and ibilio went down at the same time do to loosing a raid array. They were in no way related, it was just poor timing.

It used rpm packages with apt-get as the package manager so basically anyone familiar with debian would have had an easy time with this.

Texstar stopped providing updates for the 0.93 version as soon as he started working on the 0.94 or 2007 as it has become known as.

I found that as time progressed the quality of the packages was suffering and then to totally abandon 0.93 when the new one wasn't even in site for most users was not a good idea.

You may feel it was a bad idea, but there was really no other choice. Tex and a few others are the packagers for the RPMS. They could not focus on maintaining .93a and then building 2007. Also a lot of packages could not be updated for .93 due to build requires and the .93 base not meeting those build requirements. Also they didn't plan on such a long test cycle it was their plan to have 2007 out in January but with some many new improvements there has been a lot of bugs to work out to keep the release up to PCLinuxOS (Tex's) Standards. The 2007 Test release are still very much stable and usable.

There also appears to have been a bit of infighting in the dev group lately not unlike gentoo and debian encountered and I'm not sure if that had antyhign to do with this.

They has been no fighting with in the group. However, there was a volunteer packager who was trying to help but was quite head strong and didn't understand some of the major differences between the way PCLinuxOS does things versus Mandriva. He tried to help us for a week, but now he has gone back to building Mandriva RPMs. There are no ill feelings towards him but he is no longer packaging for us. As for division and fighting the developer team is more united then any developing team I have worked with and the common goal of functionality and stability is still very much in place.

Considering the ibiblio offered space for free and if they did in fact suck up 50% of it, then I can understand as that is not fair to all the other projects that are hosted there.

PCLinuxOS never sucked up 50% of ibiblio. Do you have any clew how many Terabytes that would be? The ibiblio issue was a whole separate issue that has effected all the distributions except five that were being hosted on ibiblio. This issue has been publicized and the outage was announced on the ibiblio mailing list.

IMHO, PCLinuxOS grew enough to have their own hosting but for some reason never did.

They are working on there new hosting now, it seems they underestimated how popular they really where. Also there's been a lot of publicity coming from different Linux sights, like The Inquirer, Distrowatch reviews etc..

I don't develop for PCLinuxOS but I have helped Texstar out in the past with a few things on the livecd many moons ago.

I have helped out also I don't remember you. and it seems from the information you've given you really have no clue what is going on. Please if you don't know something don't pretend like you do. The blind do not need a blind guide.

I currently volunteer with Linux Mint mainly due to my remastersys script I created and I also volunteer with Vector Linux which was the first distro I ever developed for. I mainly work on their installers and other tools related to backend config. The new vleasytables firewall tool is something that I created using a now abandoned script called EasyTables. I had to rewrite most of it and removed more than half of the original code that I found was not needed.

Am I supposed to be impressed? I'm not understanding how this has to do with anything? If you have to tell people that you're a great person then I guess you're really not that great then.

[Fragadelic]

You don't remember me cause I dealt directly with Texstar about it and it was probably before your time.

I'm just pointing out that my opinions are not without some merit since I do develop linux.

The information I posted was obtained from some of the pclinuxos forums so if you have a problem with it, go bug them about it.

Someone asked about what happened and I posted what I could find out about it.

Texstar should have posted all the info on a temp page so that the different rumours never would have surfaced. It was the lack of information directly from PCLinuxOS that made people wonder what happened.

Instead of coming here flaming me about the little information that could have been found, you should have been pushing them to provide the right information.

If you don't like my opinions then don't read them.

[jmiahman]

Originally Posted by Fragadelic

You don't remember me cause I dealt directly with Texstar about it and it was probably before your time.

Right, and the Catholic Church doesn't remember me because I worked directly with the Pope. Even if you did it's doesn't mean you know anything about what's going on here and now. I was there before PCLinuxOS. I used to buy Tex's Mandrake RPMs on CD. I even have a nice PCLinuxOnline BaseBall Tee. So if you were there you made no ripples. No one remembers you doing anything. That was before this is now. reality is a fun place to live, wouldn't you say?

I'm just pointing out that my opinions are not without some merit since I do develop linux.

The information I posted was obtained from some of the pclinuxos forums so if you have a problem with it, go bug them about it.

Someone asked about what happened and I posted what I could find out about it.

Texstar should have posted all the info on a temp page so that the different rumours never would have surfaced. It was the lack of information directly from PCLinuxOS that made people wonder what happened.

Rumors surfaced because of people like you not reading official information and spreading unfounded rumors. That is why your are getting flamed. It has been posted on PCLinuxOS.com where you most likely you got the link to the temporary Forum. It's also on MyPClinuxOS.com and some info is on PCLinuxOSHWDB.com. It's been up since it happened.

Instead of coming here flaming me about the little information that could have been found, you should have been pushing them to provide the right information.

If you don't like my opinions then don't read them.

If something is written to look factual it's no longer an opinion and you can no longer hide behind that excuse. Once again you've shown how important and knowledgeable you are. I can write scripts also so does that mean I'm a developer? Suddenly there's an over abundance of developers it seems. Thanks

[Fragadelic]

That doesn't even qualify a response really but I'll entertain it anyway.

You know nothing about me yet you keep making assumptions.

The FAQ they just put up should have been there from the beginning.

I stopped using PCLinuxOS when you guys stopped offering updates and patches for 093 - plain and simple. You abandoned it and so did I.

Its time to stop crying about it and blaming others for your misfortunes and do something positive about it.

You can call me whatever names you like or try to discount what I have done in the past but it shows more about who you are than it does about who I am.

Your time would be more wisely spent helping the distro out since you claimed to be a developer rather than engaging in a flamewar here.