I've not had any experience with that particular distro. Currently, I'm mostly Fedora at home though I've used ubuntu/kubuntu (debian variants). One of the reasons I like Fedora is because there are several groups that do a really good job of making sure packages are available for just about any program out there. From a brief look at the PCLinuxOS it looks like one of the smaller distros. I might have to give it a run in VMWare to see how well it works.
One of the strong points of linux is also one of its weak points, in that anyone can make a distribution of their own. There are even programs out there that help you to make a custom package just for you. That's good for folk who really like rolloing their own , or who just want a specific subset of tools to perform a specific task. (Puppy linux rocks as a recovery tool) On the other hand, if you go with a distribution like Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Fedora, or a few others, you have a much bigger set of programs that have been specifically packaged for you. I'm not really sure what the most popular flavor of linux is these days though, as it changes from year to year and I don't really keep up with it. I just keep using what I like, and recommend it to others because I know I can walk them through any gotchas that crop up fairly easily.
While you can run commands which one must learn, and i can tell Windows users to run dxdiag in the run command,
Yeah, I have some specific programs that I occasionally ask people to run from a prompt as well, because it's a heck of a lot easier than telling them "click here, here here. there... ". However for the novice windows user (or even moderately advanced one for that matter), how likely are the going to know to run 'dxdiag'?
can you search “system utilities” as you can do for Windows, and come up with multitudes of such?
Well, if I click the "K" button (same as "start" in windows), then type "utility", it lists about 20 or so programs that perform various tasks from disk management, text-to-speech tools, encryption, file managers and various other stuff.
kinfocenter will show you tons of stuff about your system.
If you want something similar to the process manager you see in windows, (assuming you're running KDE),
select K
application
system
system monitor
At least that's what works for me. (Personally I prefer 'htop' for process management, because it allows me to bind a given program to individual processors, and to have total control over process niceness.
Thus the new user cannot just search for freeware, and install it, but must hope the repos of his distro will have what he is looking for, or learn how to get and install programs otherwise.
Amazingly similar to windows. You search google, and find programs. Personally I prefer to get stuff through repos, because they've hopefully had someone at least looking at the programs who is not the author. Lord knows, you can't trust everything on the internet you download.
BTW, what is your opinion of Knoppix? I like the extensive Start menu and its overall speed and maturity, though it is not mean for installing.
Knoppix is good. There is a lot of support out there for it. I've used it from time to tine, but have always returned to Fedora and other RPM based distros, mainly because I really don't feel like learning the ins and outs of another package format.
Thanks fo your reply. I think you will like PCLinuxOS (PCLOS), and Minime2010 is a the more basic version of it which i choose as i can do without some things, and was concerned over the codec issue. It is based on Mandriva.
Your comment about a strength of many flavors of Linux also being a weakness is true. Ubuntu has sought to overcome this, but i lik the KDE desktop, and Kbuntu just does not seem to do it as well as PCLOS. I have tried Fedora, and it is one of the tops. And Pupy Linux is very good for old PCs, and does a lot for its size, though HW configuration can be more problematic.
You mentioned kinfocenter, and that is indeed one of the strengths of the KDE desktop, as i think it offers more means of configuration.
Regarding multiple clicks, you are right about eliminating these, and speed is a prime interest for me. Windows and Linux both have shortcuts more people should know about, like (in Windows) the Windows key and Pause/Break to bring up System Properties. Both should run a tutorial on standardized shortcut keys upon installation. MS could even save time on tech support if they trained people to use them.
As for commands, these are very useful, If one changes the folder View settings to be Details as i think it should be, and to allow users to actually see system files, and searches in the Windows C:\Windows\System32\ folder for .cpl, they can find a lot of commands to Control Panel applets, for instance. But MS does not think users would want to even see file types by default, let alone should see system files, the latter for good reason.
But as i will sometimes forget commands, and although we can make shortcut keys to places and things in both Windows and Linux, I use the AutoHotKey utility to launch things, from programs to folders to web sites, individually or simultaneously.
The next step should be a versatile way to configure the OS to obey voice commands. Vista has a very basic and balky program, but besides its inferior voice recognition, you cannot choose it to obey “go to free republic”, or, “Computer, hibernate” for instance. And yes, i was a Trekie.
It seems Automated Speech Recognition (ASR or just SR) on Linux is also quite rudimentary.