The Road to PCLinuxOS 2009

PCLinuxOS 2009 slow on the taking but it is definitely worth the wait. The sixth test release was closed by Sal, one of the forum's administrator and member of the Ripper Gang on February 12, 2009. There are several assumptions that the Final release will be soon. After all, countless PCLinuxOS users have been anxiously waiting for over a year. However, I have always believed in the Ripper Gang's philosophy of "it's ready when it's ready".

Let me explain the above a bit more. Very rarely, a project may be ahead of schedule but more often these can fall behind a set deadline. The case of setting and meeting deadlines can not always be advantageous. I do not want to install a half-baked OS just for the sake of releasing it on time.

This had happened in the Windows side of the fence and even in the Linux community. The Ripper Gang's philosophy makes more sense to me, and is one of the reasons why I stick to this finely crafted Linux distribution.

But whenever PCLinuxOS 2009 is finally released. It will surely make waves, even if it is just within the PCLinuxOS community.

A brief breakdown of the previous releases are as follow:

PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime announced its release on January 08, 2008. I have been using this particular release and had upgraded it to the most current package versions in the PCLinuxOS repositories.

PCLinuxOS 2007 announced its release on May 20, 2007. If I can remember correctly, this was the particular release that placed PCLinuxOS on the number two spot in 2007 at DistroWatch.com.

On August 22, 2006, PCLinuxOS 0.93a aka Big Daddy or Full Monty (although the latter didn't seem to caught up) was released. The official announcement can no longer be found but an excellent review by Susan Linton can be read at Tuxmachines.org.. Two weeks prior to the release of Big Daddy, Junior was release on August 9, 2006. Clement Lefebvre wrote a comprehensive review of Junior at LinuxForums.org. Minime was announced on August 4, 2006 with an affirmative review again from Tuxmachines.org.

PCLinuxOS 0.92 was the release that replaced my Windows XP, and it was this version that persuaded me to commit myself to PCLinuxOS. It was released on November 22, 2005. Atanu Datta wrote a positive feature review of the release on Linux.com.

There were earlier releases of this mighty fine Linux distro, and though I was not with it from the very beginning, I sure am glad that I am with it now. I thought I might dig deeper into its roots but that would have to be for another post.