Aqua-Soft ForumsI installed both the "Big Dady" and "Mini me" versions of this .93 release and I am blown away by both.
The big dady issue is a full blown version while the minime version is a minimal install with a bare kde desktop even firefox is omited.
PCLinuxOS has a Mandriva connection and uses some of mandrivas/mandrakes configuration tools, but the similarities stop dead there. Texstar, the creator of the PCLinuxOS project has configured everything in the OS from the kernel up. Menus, icons, cursors and software selection are unique, as is the useage of apt, synaptic and Texstar's own cach of packages all on one location managed by the project. And the package selection rivals that of Debian.
But what I like about this little distro is that it is the easiest distro there is to install and maintain and indeed everything just plain works, the first time.
Two features I like the best are PCLinuxOS's ability to install to a usb drive with out any sticky configuration to make it bootable, just select the "install to usb hard drive option".
And you have to love this, with the use of one line of script you can create your very own LIVE cd/dvd. I mean a mirror image of your instalation compressed on cd/dvd with the compression of 2 gigs to 700mbs. This is great for a truly portable system from where you can download your email, serf the web via your personal bookmarks, everything is there from your user account networking, and do I here some thinking "create my own little custome distro. I did and I can tell you it is easy to do in an afternoon, and your live cd/dvd is installable. Can't think of a better backup than that, other than drive cloning.
So give it a try the mini me isue is an easy 299 mbs download and whatever you want to add to it is available from apt with a fairly fast down load.