PCLinuxOS and the Guest Additions Disagreement

buster · April 09, 2019, 08:17:52 PM

Jesse Smith reviewed Pclos on Distrowatch this week and mentioned the problem with his virtual machine install. I had already mentioned this on their forums (been a member since 2006), and chimed in on the comments at Distrowatch. (The needed software can be downloaded thru Synaptic (or an equivalent) on pretty well every distro I've tried. Sometimes it's already installed!)

Users of Pclos are very sensitive.

They did not take well to this. Apparently their distro is perfection as it stands, and criticism is fake news.

So to use Pclos in virtual requires the traditional terminal commands. Which is an unnecessary pain to me. On principle I wont use it in virtual for this reason. Ease of use has to be the focus for desktop Linux now.

This is probably just a post to show how easily I get annoyed in my old age. And maybe some at Pclos have never heard of the KISS principle.

Jason · April 10, 2019, 03:07:54 AM

I can't find the post right now but I mentioned trying to add the tools for Virtualbox and had the same experience that Jesse did. A broken desktop. Not impressed. This might happen because it's not a derivative distro and they do things their own way. I saw something about just deleting the xorg.conf file afterwards and then it would work. How the heck would anybody know that?

ssfc72 · April 10, 2019, 03:43:44 AM

I would be interested to know what the command line commands/steps are, that would allow a successful install of PCLOS into a Virtual Machine program!

Quote from: Jason Wallwork on April 10, 2019, 03:07:54 AM
I can't find the post right now but I mentioned trying to add the tools for Virtualbox and had the same experience that Jesse did. A broken desktop. Not impressed. This might happen because it's not a derivative distro and they do things their own way. I saw something about just deleting the xorg.conf file afterwards and then it would work. How the heck would anybody know that?

buster · April 10, 2019, 10:15:26 AM

Here you are Bill. Shouldn't be too hard with the illustrations:

https://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,124560.0.html

Jason · April 10, 2019, 11:15:32 AM

I'm pretty sure that was the procedure I followed and it didn't work. I notice the post is from 2014, too.

Update: I should add that this was with testing with the previous version of PCLinuxOS, not the March edition that recently came out. I'm going to give that version a try and see if it still has this issue.

ssfc72 · April 10, 2019, 03:39:14 PM

Thanks Buster and Jason!
I will be looking for your latest test install of PCLOS in Virtual, Jason. :-)

buster · April 10, 2019, 05:57:14 PM

So I use VMWare, and can find nothing for guest additions in the Pclos forum. Downloaded, reinstalled, did all 265 updates for the latest Pclos. I can't even change the display settings - it jumps back to the default.

Now, at the present moment, in virtual, I have deepin, mx, Lite, Mint, suse, and mageia all capable of running at full screen, and all with drag and drop working. Any others I've tested also worked, with basically no effort - except Pclos.

Two thumbs down, and even some toes, for this distro.

note added later: If you would like to try a derivative of Mandrake, as Pclos is, I would highly recommend Mageia -very solid and professional. (Ripples of Suse seem to run thru it.) Secure, clear, and as far as I can see, everything works. Pretty quick too. Not trendy, but attractive. I come back to this word 'solid' again, but not stodgy like Suse. KDE - lovely desktop.