The PCQuest magazing folks have created their own distribution, PCQ Linux 8.0, based upon Red Hat’s 8.0 Linux. Read the introductory article about their distro at PCQuest.com.
Introducing PCQ Linux 8.0
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They replaced xmms with mplayer? It’s great that they include mplayer, but it isn’t a replacement for xmms..
I was about to say something very similar (till I saw your post).
A case in point is the exclusion of xmms. Instead we have mplayer, which with its GUI and even an encoder plays everything xmms does and much, much more.
That’s a horrible case in point. Of all the thing to throw away, they throw away one of the popular/most used programs in Linux.
Anaconda, as it’s called, was easy enough to modify, the difficult part was changing all instances of Red Hat to PCQLinux (as required by RedHat).
If essentially doing a mass find and replace is that hard for the PCQuest developer team, it really doesn’t say much for their technical skills.
And does anybody have any screenshots or used this distro?
To be fair, I dont think these guys aim at being a linux distribution player or something. They have always (since RH 7.0 I think ) put together a RH linux CD with some minor changes and distributed it with a copy of their magzine. (which BTW costs about Rs 25 ie. roughly 50 cents). Since nobody (very few) in India have a high speed internet connection in India, downloading ISO images is out of question. So their free Linux CD’s is how most of us, including me, have had our first introduction to Linux. Also every 6 months they ship another CD, which you just pop in, mount and run the update.sh script, which basically updates your system. They also have a monthly Linux column in their magzine with lots of article on installation, various linux Apps etc. I think they are doing a great job in advocating Linux through a cheap medium and their efforts should be seen in that perspective.
Disclaimer: I am currently staying in US for the past few years, so I have lost touch with the magzine cost and other specifics, but the gist of what I wrote above still holds true.
To answer PD.
I left India in 1999, PCQ was Rs30 for the normal issue & the Linux CD issue was near Rs50-75.(1-1.5$). But PCQ has been the only magazine consistantly spreading linux starting from Slackware & then going to Redhat.
There were other magazines that will just have a Linux issue & end of story but these guys do follow up regularly on that.
Shouldnt it be 1.0
(or less if its unstable)
hehe
Well PCQuest is now around Rs 100 ie USD 2. Quite a few including me started linux with the distro by PCQ (5.2?).
As far as I know, why its a separate distro is they package with the patches/updated versions following a release. Since those changes are not owned up by RedHat they have to name it something else.
It is a big question of support. By creating their own version they can not only help out with the support but also tailor it to their market. Of course it must of taken a lot of work to begin with for a magazine.
It will be interesting to see if other magazines start to take this path.
I started using Linux(RH 5)in 1997. That CD was from PCQuest. Since then, Linux has grown leaps and bounds( mainly in student community) in India.
PCQuest has a dedicated team of people who are really into linux. Infact, it wouldn’t be far from truth if I say, most Linux “stars” in India are associated with PCQ one way or the other.
I do agree that Mplayer swithchover is not a good move.
As of now ( on a sunday 😉 ) I’m trying to a build a 2 node cluster using the PCQLinux distro.
Yep! their motto is ” desktop to supercomputer”. and they have a neat job with this distro.
I HAVE BEEN A WINDOWS USER FOR A LONG TIME
AND IT IS DUE TO THE PCQ MAGZINE THAT I HAVE SHIFTED
TO LINUX.
In India now. PCQ costs 125 Rupees. The defaults on the OS suck anyway. Even better is the fact that someone just launched a new magazine catering solely to linux community titled “Linux For You” which costs 50 Rupees, it distributed Knoppix in the first issue.
PCQ used to distribute Redhat once, wish they continued doing that. PCQ Linux is way uncool anyway.. 😉
As someone has already pointed out, PCQuest was responsible for instroducing thousands of readers to Linux. They started off with Slackware, but switched to RedHat soon after. And they have been regularly doling out updated versions after that.
Even though the magazine is not specifically a Linux-zine, the amount of effort they have put into promoting Linux is commendable. And this inspite of the fact that a large chunk of their readers don’t (or atleast didn’t) care about Linux.
And even though distro is only supposed to be RedHat ‘based’, it’s _actually_ RedHat for all practical purposes.
I haven’t tried the latest distro, since I was running RH 8.0 already. However, my experience with previous distros have been pretty good. Infact, I found little or no difference between PCQLinux and the RH version it was based on.
– Shaitan