Plenty of Linux distributions are out there to play with, and sometimes one of the good ones slips by. I haven't paid too much attention to PCLinuxOS in the past, and it turns out I was quite remiss in not doing so.

Although it suffers from an incredibly boring name, PCLinuxOS has a lot to offer desktop Linux users. It's a shame that so much utility has to be obscured by a bland name—but hopefully the developers will decide to rebrand this distribution under a catchy name.

What's New

New stuff included in this release:

400+ package updates
Kernel 2.6.16.27
KDE 3.5.3
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6
OpenOffice 2.0.3
Updated Control Center
Better font rendering
Additional grub options
New installer that gives the user additional partition setup options
Can use LILO or GRUB as the default bootloader
Better wireless configuration

Installation

The installer program let me pick whether or not I wanted to install on a USB drive or a regular IDE/SATA drive. I also had the option to use my existing partitions, erase and use the entire disk or do custom disk partitioning. Since I was installing on my test box, I opted to go for the entire disk.

Full Story.