PCLinuxOS is awesome. Especially I like the “2008 MiniMe” edition, which comes as a bare-bone installable live CD, and contains only the KDE desktop essentials. This means that you will have to install all the desired applications on top of it, in order to make it a usable desktop system. In other words, the approach of 2008 MiniMe is very similar to Microsoft Windows XP, which also comes only with a minimal desktop environment and without applications. The beauty of this approach is that using PCLinuxOS package management (Synaptic) the installation of required applications is a snap and the selection of software is customized for your needs. No clutter, no useless applications, just the tools you want. As you result you have a stable, customized and a very light weight desktop environment.

I have recently installed a couple of PCLinuxOS systems, in most cases dual-booting along side with Windows XP. Along the way I learned a few useful tricks, which I wanted to share with the public. These are nothing spectacular and most likely will not reveal anything new for the Linux enthusiasts, but I think that newbies coming from the Windows world may find these valuable.

1) Enabling Windows NTFS partition support

Open Synaptic package management, and install ntfs-config and it’s dependency ntfs-3g driver. In the system menu you will now find / System / Configuration / Hardware / NTFS Configuration Tool. Use that to enable access to your Windows NTFS partitions.

2) Mounting a software RAID Windows NTFS partition using dmraid and ntfs-3g

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