Read AND Write access to windows partitions (NTFS) from PCLinuxOS

By default PCLinuxOS supports Read Only access to windows disk partitions formated as NTFS. This was quite inconvenient to me because I have a 250Gb external disk (USB) already formated with NTFS that I use to store my pictures, films, backups, etc.

Fortunatelly, there is a workaround to have Read and Write access to NTFS in PCLinuxOS. It is called ntfs-3g and can be installed from the PCLinuxOS pakect manager. Doing the following:

1. Open the "Packet Manager" from your "pannel" (the bar on the bottom of the screen). If you are not in a root session (as you should!) type the root password to open the Packet Manager.
2. Once open, click on "Search" and type: ntfs
3. Right click on "ntfs-3g" and select "Mark for Installation"
4. Click on "Apply" and follow the instructions if any.

Now you are ready to have read/write access to your NTFS drives.

Let suppose you have a NTFS drive: /dev/sda1

1. Make sure that it is not already mounted. You can safely issue a: "umount /dev/sda1" to make sure it is unmounted, or you can check with "mount -l".
2. Find a mounting directory (or "point" in the linux jargon). If you do not have one already make it yourself, for example you could create the directory /media/ext_disk
3. Issue the following command to mount the drive:
   mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/ext_disk

The system will give you a warning about needing the linux kernel 2.6.20 (PCLinuxOS 2007 is still on 2.6.18.8, when are they going to port it to 2.6.20?). There is no fix for this, and in theory it is NOT SAFE to run it like, this, but so far I haven't had any problems yet (only 3 days playing with it, I'll try to report back later on).

If you want the NTFS to be read/write from boot time then you need to add the following line in /etc/fstab (modified for your drive and mount point, of course):

/dev/hda1 /media/disk ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

You are done! Now you can read/write to NTFS... but because of the warning above please play it safe and if things go wrong please remember that you were warned :-)

I later found another alternative. Install ntfs-config from the Packet Manager and the run the command "ntfs-config" follow the instructions and it will configure your NTFSs for write access.

Network printers in multiple boxes

This is an update to the previous entry about network printers from multiple linux boxes.

The previous post was correct, but it possible is easier to just install the printers on each linux box. Otherwise it becomes necessary to address the printer with the IP address of the computer where the printers were installed and where CUPS is running.

For example, if the IP of the computer where the printers where installed is 192.168.1.5, to access the MFC5440CN printer you will need to address the printer like MFC5440CN@192.168.1.5 and so you will also need to put the brpcfax command like this (see previous posts about brpcfax) to print from OpenOffice and Firefox:

brpcfax -P MFC5440CN@192.168.1.5

Another obvious disadvantage of this method is that you need to have the computer with IP 192.168.1.5 on when you want to print from another computer. Also, that computer will need a static IP address or you will need to reconfigure the printer name when the IP changes (reboot, power failure, expiry, etc).

To install the printer in another box just follow the standard instructions as in the previous post about the printer installation.

Making printers available in PCLinuxOS Network

Now that I have two PCLinuxOS boxes running on the network, it seems that to make the printers available to the computer where I did not install the drivers nor the CUPS (C Unix Printing System) server, I need to add to the file /etc/cups/cupsd.conf the following:


AuthType None
Order Deny,Allow
Deny From None
Allow From All


The the CUPS server needs to be restarted. I did it issuing from a root terminal the command "cupsdisable" and then "cupsenable"

This seemed to have done the trick...

Configuration to mount usb memory sticks

Today I'll explain how to configure the system to mount a usb memory stick so we can read and write from an user account, instead of just from the root account.

I have now two computers running PCLinuxOS, one with a HD installation (my old PII 300Mhz) and one with the LiveUSB instalation (the not so old PIV Dual Core 3GHz). As I have been working on the PII before I completed the installation and configuration of the LiveUSB, I wanted to transfer all my work (including Thunderbird mails and folders) to the LiveUSB so I could use it in the PIV.

But then I run into trouble when connecting the USB memory stick to the old PII. First, although I could mount and see and write to the USB memory from user root, when I was logged as other user i suffered different problems, from not been able to mount the usb memory stick, to been able to mount it but not read, or been able to read but not write. This different combination of problems were happening as I was changing configurations trying to fix the problem.

If you have run into this problem, you might have tried to put in the /etc/fstab file an entry for the usb device. I did that but it is not a good idea because it locks the usb mounting point to a particular usb drive "letter" and number, so DON'T do something like "/dev/sda1 /mnt/usb vfat defaults 0 0".

As I was googling and learning, I found that there is a special file system for usb that precisely provides the functionality to make the usb file systems mount automaticall without the need to indicate a specific device name and mount point.

In the /etc/fstab file there is already an entry to provide this functionality, which is:
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0

But that entry was not good enough for me because I could mount and read the two partitions in my USB memory stick (one vfat and the other ext2), but I could not write to them (at least not to the ext2 because the truth is that I didn't try to write to the vfat).

So googling a bit more I learnt the options that I could use in fstab and after a few trials I found the combination that allowed me to write to the usb memory stick with my standard user. What I did was to replace the line mentioned about from the /etc/fstab with the line:
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs dev,suid,user,rw 0 0

Be careful because I believe that the order of the options is important, for example if you put the "dev" option after the user and rw options I believe it overrides them and set it back to nouser (only root can mount) and ro (read only).

With that modified fstab, I re-inserted the usb memory stick and I was able to write with my standard account. Also, if I issue a "mount" command from a root terminal window I get the following for my usb memory stick:

/dev/sda1 on /media/usb type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,uhelper=hal,flush,uid=501,utf8,shortname=lower)

/dev/sda2 on /media/disk type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,uhelper=hal,data=ordered)

Which initially looks correct to me.

These guidelines, I believe, will be also useful to anyone connecting through USB a storage device, like for example a external USB HD.

It it was useful to you this post, please send me a comment or link to it.

Configuring Brother Multifunction printer MFC-5440CN for Open Office and Firefox on PCLinuxOS

This entry explains how to install the multifunction printer Brother MFC-5440CN on PCLinuxOS to work in an integrated way with Firefox and Open Office with all its functions, that is Network printing, print to FAX and scanner.

The instructions are probably valid with small modifications for other Linux distros. Also the intructions are probably valid for other Brother multifunction printers by just downloading the correct drivers for your printer from the Brother website support for Linux.

We are going to download all the drivers first and then install them.

1. Go to webpage http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html

2. Click on “click here” besides the “LPR Printer driver”

3. Click on “Please be sure to install the LPR driver”

4. Search for printer MFC-5440CN (or whatever other Brother model you have) and click on the “Download” button on the second column (for Mandriva)

5. Accept the legal stuff (don't know what it says! :-) ) and save the file (to the Desktop for example)

6. Go back two webpages (i.e. to the “Brother CUPS driver”

7. Click on “Drivers for Red Hat / Madriva (Mandrake) / SuSE

8. Search for printer MFC-5440CN (or whatever other Brother model you have) and click on the “Download” button on the second column (for Mandriva)

9. Accept the legal stuff (don't know what it says! :-) ) and save the file (to the Desktop for example)

10. So go back to the URL in point 1 and click on “click here” esides where it says “SANE Scanner Driver”

11. Choose the brscan or the brscan2 driver depending on your printer (list of models is there). For MFC-5440CN the driver is brscan2

12. On the table for Red Hat / Mandriva ... download the driver brscan2 for 32bit version. Accept legal and save.

13. Go back to the webpage in point 1.

14. Click on the “Click here” besides the “LPR PC-FAX send driver”

15. Download the driver for Mandriva

16. Go back to the webpage in point 1.

17. Click on the “Click here” besides the “CUPS Wrapper PC-FAX send”

18. Download the RPM installer package

19. Go to the URL in step 1 and leave it openend, we will need it later

Installation of the Drivers

1. Installing the LPR Driver (need for the subsequent CUPS wrapper)

   1. open a terminal as root (or open a normal one and issue a “su”)

   2. Go to the folder where you stored the drivers. If you left them in Desktop they will be in /home//Desktop, if you are root, they will be on /root/Desktop.

   3. type
      rpm -ihv –nodeps MFC5440CNlpr-1.0.2-1.i386.rpm
      (or what ever driver is for your printer)

   4. Leave the terminal window open, we will need it later.
      
      

2. Installing the CUPS wrapper

   1. type
      apt-get install tcsh
      type “y” to confirm the installation
      This is very important because the rpm package has a script that needs csh which is not default in PCLinuxOS. To run a csh script you can use tcsh that is csh compatible (extension).

   2. Now we need to fix an error in the PCLinuxOS tcsh. Type
      vi /etc/profile.d/10pclinuxos-release.csh
      (or use your favourite editor)
      Then change the line “setenv META_CLASS $META_CLASS” to “setenv METACLASS”

   3. type
      rpm -ihv --nodeps cupswrapperMFC5440CN-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm

   4. If it gives you an error sayin “already installed” then type
      rpm -ihv --nodeps –force cupswrapperMFC5440CN-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm
      You might get this error if you tried to install this package before you found this tutorial :-)

   5. In your web browser open “http://localhost:631” (the CUPS web interface)

   6. Click on “Printers”, then on “Modify Printer” on the MFC5440CN printer

   7. Optionally indicate location, click “Continue”

   8. Select device “Brother MFC-5440CN xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Brother MFC-5440CN) where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the actual IP address assigned to your printer. Then click contiue.

   9. Select Make “Brother” and click “Continue”

   10. Select Model “Brother MFC-5440CN CUPS v1.1 (en) and click on “Modify Printer”

   11. In a few seconds the page will reload. Click on “Print Test Page”. If you have followed all the steps it will print!

3. Installing the SANE drivers

   1. Go back to your root terminal and type exit if you where still on tcsh (that is, if you left the terminal as it was from the previous step).

   2. make sure that you have the latest version of xsane by typing
      apt-get install xsane
      and installing it if necessary

   3. type
      rpm -ivh brscan2-0.2.3-0.i386.rpm

   4. type
      brsaneconfig2 -a name=BRD_SCANNER model=MFC-5440CN ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
      where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address of your printer that you can double check on http://localhost:631 if you do not remember.

      Be careful that the model has be typed exactly as above (or whatever model you have typed with the same “notation”).

   5. You can check that the configuration is right by typing:
      brsaneconfig2 -q
      and you sould see something like
      0 BRD_SCANNER “MFC-5440CN” I:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

   6. You can try also that it works with the application xsane tha is on “Start->Multimedia->Graphics->Xsane”. If you press SCAN it should start directly to scan without needing to configure anything else!
      
      

4. Installing the LPR FAX drivers

   1. In the root terminal type
      rpm -ivh --nodeps brmfcfaxlpd-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm
      
      

5. Installing the CUPS Wrapper for PC-FAX

   1. In the root terminal type
      rpm -ivh --nodeps brmfcfaxcups-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm

   2. Now you will see in the CUPS webpage the printer BRFAX

   3. Click on “Modify Printer” for the BRPFAX

   4. Click on “Continue”

   5. Select the Device “Brother MFC-5440CN xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Brother MFC-5440CN) click continue

   6. Select the Make “Brother” click continue

   7. Select Model “Brother BRMFCFAX for CUPS (en)”

   8. click on “Modify Printer”

   9. 
      
      

6. Configuring printing to FAX

   1. This is unfortunatelly not that easy as it should be. It is not possible to print directly to the BRFAX

   2. To configure printing from firefox do he following

      1. Go to File->Print

      2. select the printer PostScript/default

      3. select properties

      4. In the “print command” replace “lpr” to brpcfax. This is only needed the first time.

      5. Now you can print to fax clicking on “Print”. This is the only step you will need when you want to print again (and selecting the PostScript/default if it is not already)

      6. This will display a java dialog to enter he number to dial. Enter and click on Send. It should send the fax!

      7. If you have trouble printing to fax it may be because brpcfax needs root permisions and you are with another account. If this happens then modify the command for the postscript/default to “sudo brpcfax”. You will also need to add your user to the sudo list for this command (not included in this tutorial but google for sudo and you will see that it is easy, if i have more time I'll include it here)

   3. To configure printing from Open Office you need to do

      1. You need to run spadmin doing from the termina window (may be there is a way to open it from the Desktop, but I didn't try):

         cd /usr/lib/ooo-2.2/program
         ./spaminsp

         This will open a window with the Printer Administration for Open Office.

      2. Click on “New Printer”

      3. Leave selected the default option “Connect a fax device” and click on Next

      4. Leave selected the option “The default printer” and click next

      5. Now enter the following command
         brpcfax -P BRFAX -o Paper=A4 fax-number=(PHONE) (TMP)
         and Next

      6. Now you can set the name of the fax printer for OO, you can leave the default name Fax printer.

      7. Click on Finish and the Close
         
         

Now the fax is configured to be used from Open Office, to test it open OOWriter type something and the Print to “Fax Printer” (or whatever name you gave it in step 6 above). Once you print, a new window will appear requesting the fax number, enter it and click on OK. Your MFC should then start dialing!

If it does not work you might need to add to the command in spadmin a “sudo “ before the brpcfax. You will also need to give permitions to your user to execute with sude the command brpcfax (not covered here but easy to find in google).

I hope that this article has been useful I would like to hear your comments...

Creating a LiveUSB PCLinuxOS

The objective is "simple" to have a 2Gb flash memory stick with a bootable PCLinuxOS that I can plug in almost any computer to have in a few seconds my "own" computer running on it!

Is like to have my own computer in a memory stick in my pocket! Nice!

Also, I will use it to test for some more time PCLinuxOS running on my PIV Dual Core 3000MHz 1Gb ram before I decide to remove Windows XP from it.

This tasks took me some time to figure out, but this is not something that normal user will do.
What normal users need is to get PCLinuxOS pre-installed in their computers (dual boot with PCLinuxOS beeing the default!?). Apparently Dell has arrived to an agreement to pre-install Ubuntu on their machines, I don't know the extent of that agreement but definitely that is the way how Linux will really get to the mass public.

Doing some googleing I found that there are two ways to prepare the LiveUSB. One from within Windows and the other from withing PCLinuxOS. As I had disconnected the monitor from my Windows box to see the PCLinuxOS box, I'll prepare it from withing PCLinuxOS. Also this is probably the way that most people do it. Load PCLinuxOS from the LiveCD and prepare the LiveUSB.

The link for the instructions on how to prepare the LiveUSB for PCLinuxOS are:

Create from Windows a Live-USB on a Flash Memory Stick
Create from PCLinuxOS a Live-USB on a Flash Memory Stick

In any case, in the end I didn't follow the instructions exactly as they are on those webpages. Those instructions have a weak point, they create only one partition on the flash and I learnt that to have a proper LiveUSB is necessary two have at least two (so you can keep all your configuration, changes, documents, etc on the memory stick).

These are the stepts that I followed:

1. I have already the PCLinuxOS LiveCD physically in my CDROM and loaded as my OS.

2. I logged as root.
   So we have full privileges to do what we need.

3. Inserted the 2Gb USB flash memory stick.
   It can be done probably in just 1Gb, and if you have a bigger memory you can created a bigger second partition (will see it later).

4. Open a terminal and type "fdisk -l" (without the quotes obviously)
   We do this to know which devices the PCLinuxOS is detecting. One of the will be your USB memory and it will be called something like /dev/sdx1 where x is the letter assigned by PCLinuxOS, usually a, b, c, etc... depending on how many USB devices you have connected.

5. Type "umount /dev/sdx1" (replacing x with your flash drive letter)
   This will unmount your flash drive in case that it was already mounted. In Linux drives need to be mounted to a mounting point (like a logical directory) before the can be accessed, but that is not a problem for us now).

6. Type "fdisk /dev/sdx" (replacing x with your flash drive letter).
   It will appear a menu where you will type:

1. "p" to show the current partitions on the usb drive. Then type "d" + enter + the number of the partition to delete them all

2. "n" to make a new partition.

3. "p" to make the partition primary

4. "1" to make this partition one

5. hit enter to use the default first cylinder

6. "+800M" to reserve 800Mb for this first partition. This is enough to fit the LiveCD info and a bit more just in case we need more space later.

7. "a" to make this partition active

8. “1” to select partition 1

9. “t” to change it’s file system

10. “6” to select the fat16 file system

11. "n" to make a new partition.

12. "p" to make the partition primary

13. "2" to make this partition two

14. hit enter to use the default first cylinder

15. hit enter to use the default last cylinder, it will take the rest of the space available

16. "a" to make this partition active

17. “2” to select partition 2

18. “t” to change it’s file system

19. “83” to select the Linux file system

20. type w to write the new partition table

7. type umount /dev/sdx1 (replacing x with your device) to unmount the partition

8. type umount /dev/sdx2 (replacing x with your device) to unmount the partition

9. Now we are going to give format to the partitions. For that we need to do

   1. type mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n usb /dev/sdx1 to format the first partition as fat (replace x with your flash drive)

   2. type mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdx2 to format the second partition as Linux native (replace x with your flash drive). We need this file system to be able to save all our configuration and documents to the USB.

The above could probably be done also from the “Administration Center->Mount Points->Create, delete and resize hard disk partitions” but I tried and didn't get good results, may be my fault so I decided to do it manually.

10. Now in theory it is enough to remove and reinsert the USB memory, but I found that not to work well in my system, that is why I recommed to reboot your computer with they USB key removed and insert it when loaded up.

11. Log in again as root, open a terminal

12. Type mkdir /tmp/usb

13. Type mount /dev/sdx1 /tmp/usb (replace x with your USB drive)

14. Type mount /mnt/cdrom (or cdrom2 if you have more than one)

15. Type cd /mnt/cdrom (or cdrom2)

16. Type cp -rf livecd.sqfs isolinux/* /tmp/usb
    This is going to take some time as it has to copy the whole CD

17. Type cd /tmp/usb

18. Type mv isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg

19. We are going to add now a new menu option when loading PCLinuxOS. To do this type:
    vi syslinux.cfg
    (or use your favorite editor)
    Just below "gfxboot bootlogo" insert the following lines:
    
    label LiveUSB_SDA
    kernel vmlinuz
    append livecd=livecd initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=788 keyb=en lang=en splash=silent fstab=rw,noauto changes=/dev/sda2
    
    If you happen to have more USB drives connected (as it happens to me) it will be useful to add a similar section just below but replacing "sda" by "sdb" (both in label and in changes). It depends on what drive letter your system assigns to the USB memory stick. In any case, you should always leave he sda option for when you plug your usb memory in a computer different than yours, for example in an Internet Cafe, where chances are that your USB drive will be the only available.

20. Type cd

21. Type umount /tmp/usb

22. Type syslinux -sf /dev/sdx1 (replacing x with your USB device)

23. Reboot your computer and set your system BIOS to boot from USB-HDD. Also set the boot priority to boot the USB device first if this option is available. Some BIOS have the option to select each boot from which device we want to boot. For example, in mine pressing F11 while booting displays a menu with all the devices from which I could boot, including the USB key.

24. Now the computer can complaying saying that there is no boot sector or something similar. Mine did. In that case you need to:

    1. Reboot again wih the LiveCD,

    2. log in as root

    3. open a terminal

    4. type “lilo -M /dev/sdx” (replacing x with your USB device)

    5. reboot your computer and make the bios to boot from the usb device (if you have not done it already).

       Now it should work, if it doesn't I would recommend repeating from step 19, at lest that happened to me the first time and the second one worked.

Configuring the first installation of PCLinuxOS to HD

One of the delicate points of the configuration of the PCLinuxOS in my PII was to make it work nicely with my multifunction printer (FAX, scanner, copier and printer) connected directly to the home network, which I need to use every day for work.

What I wanted was an easy integration, similar to the one I had in MS Office. I need to be able also to easily print to the FAX from Word and Explorer (well, the Open Office and PCLinuxOS equivalents).

My multifunction printer is a Brother MFC-5440CN and I found that brother has drivers for Linux for the CUPS system. I learnt that CUPS is a stardard system for printing in Linux, that was created to solve the problems with printing that Linux seemed to experience years ago, or so I read...

I installed the drivers, what not difficult but required to use the command line. I have no trouble with that, but I recognise that many users will do not know how to do it and might be frightened with a command line. This is something that need to be solved and it is a problem from Brother. The driver was installed using something that is called rpm that seems to be a tool to install applications (I'm learning all this as I go...)

PCLinuxOS has a very nice tool to install applications and even update them automatically from Internet, may be that tool could be used also to intall the Brother drivers, but I don't know if that tool "Synaptic" is compatible with rpm or not (and a standard user doesn't need to know). If they are compatible Brother should issue the instructions explaining how to do it from Synaptic. Ideally there should be a way so with simply clicking in a link in the Brother website, the Synaptic utility automatically starts, downloads and install the printer drivers that I needed. May be it can do it already, but it wasn't there. If it doesn't do it, then that is an idea for the developers... and the driver providers.

In the end I managed to make everything to work printer over the network (that one was easy), scanner and fax, but it took me some time and some googling and figuring for work arounds. That is something that a normal user would not be able to do and is quite a big problem for the popularisation of systems like Linux. I believe that in my case the problems resides more in the drivers provided by Brother because for example it is not possible to print directly to the "fax-printer" BRFAX that the drivers create, instead it is necessary to go through a Brother program called brpcfax and that causes problems to integrate the printing to fax easily. Later, when I describe who to configure my LiveUSB (live system running from a 2Gb flash memory stick) I'll explain in detail how to configure the fax, just in case you arrived here from google trying to learn how to do it :-)

Once the multifunction printer MFC-5440CN was working with all its functions in PCLinuxOS I could start doing my daily work... WITHOUT WINDOWS!!!! and from my old PII 300Mhz 512Mb running in multitasking (couple of word documents, a couple of big spread sheets, a couple of firefox sessions each with 5 or 7 websites (tabs) opened, the calculator... ) and almost at the same speed that I had with XP in my powerful PIV Dual Core 3000MHz and 1Gb AMAZING how inefficient Microsoft is!

Installing PCLinuxOS to Hard Disk

I have to recognize that I was a bit "silly" trying to install the PCLinuxOS Live CD to hard disk. I started googleing looking on how to install it to disk, I was trying to locate the version of PCLinuxOS that I needed to download in order to install it to HD. I was surprised that I couldn't find it easily, all I was finding was the live cd version... strange...

Finally, I found an entry where explained how to install to HD... just click on the Install icon on the Desktop loaded with the Live CD!!!!

I felt really bad for the 30 mins that I lost looking for the HD version :-)

The installation to HD involves creating partitions on your HD and writting a new Master Boot Record (MBR) so the BIOS knows what to load when the PC boots. I'm going to install it in my old PII 300Mhz with 512Mb of RAM that was running XP quite slowly. This is a old computer that I used mainly to download music and films so I backed up the useful information to my recently purchased 250Gb external USB drive and wiped out the old PC's HD! I felt good and uneasy at the same time wiping out a HD that has been with me for almost 10 years! (If I remember well).

I followed the instructions of the installation wizard, selecting the option of deleting the current partitions, this created new ones and asked me to reboot and select existing ones. I did so and everything installed smoothly. I didn't check the time it took to install, but I think it was something between 20 and 30 minutes. It has to read, decompress and write the whole CD and that takes some time by the forces of physics :-)

There I was, with a PII 300MHz running PCLinuxOS much faster than it was running XP and just in a while!

Why PCLinuxOS?

There is a recurring reason around Internet this days triggered by Windows Vista. We have quite a reasonable computer PIV Dual Core with 1Gb RAM and 3D graphic card, a computer with the power of some supercomputers of not that many years ago, and still this is almost the minimum hardware required for Windows Vista. I'm not going to replace my "supercomputer" just to put Vista and have it running like if it was my old Pentium II.

Therefore, as many are doing, I decided to have a look at the current state of Linux. A couple of years ago I tried but I didn't like too much what I saw, it was still quite behind Windows, but this time I had a good surprise!

I googled a bit and found the versions that run out of a CD without the need for installing. I wanted to try this just in case I didn't like Linux as installing in the HD means reconfiguring the boot sector, partitioning, etc which is quite cumbersome and dangerous if you do not do a proper backup of your whole computer.

From the live versions I read quite a bit about Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS so I download and burned to CD both, which I tried on my old Pentium II 300MHz with 512Mb and in my laptop Dual Core with 1Gb of RAM.

Ubuntu: I didn't like too much the initial aspect of Ubuntu, that brown is a bit horrible, it doesn't look unprofessional, but obviously that can be solved changing the theme. The problem with Ubuntu is that it didn't make the WIFI connection on my laptop to work from start, it complained about having to run drivers not supported and I didn't manage to make the connection to work within 2 minutes. That was critical for me. If with Ubuntu I don't manage to make WIFI to run in two minutes then probably I'm going to have a lot of other problems that will take a lot of my previous time to solve. Ubuntu scored bad for me.

PCLinuxOS: When I tried PCLinuxOS on my Laptop I got the WIFI connection working in less than 30 seconds! Even before the Desktop loaded as the configuration is done automatically during the very brief setup of the live cd. That was amazing for me specially compared to the previous experience with Ubuntu so I decided to try more this PCLinuxOS.

When the Desktop loaded, it was neat and very professional looking. It was very easy to customize, change the screen resolution, fonts, etc. It comes with a lot of applications installed in the live cd, like Open Office with all the equivalents to MS Office (word, excel, powepoint, etc), firefox, multimedia applications, etc... quite complete for only a standard (compressed) CD.

Making PCLinuxOS to view the rest of my home network (from computers running microsoft) was reasonably easy with something called "smb4k" under "PC" (like "Start" in MS)->Internet->File Transfer. I put a shortcut to smb4k in the desktop and I have easy access to the home network. There are other mechanism, but that was the first that I found in a couple of minutes.

Then to make the PCLinuxOS box visible to the rest of the network it seemed a bit more complicated. It is necessary to configure Samba, not too complex, but I had to google a bit to learn how Samba works and how is configured. I had heard of Samba before, but I didn't know what it was for exactly.

Once I had access to my network from PCLinuxOS, I took the Office documents created by MS in my windows boxes and opened with Open Office. I was pleasantly surprised. They looked almost identical, the functions are very similar, the look of everything is very professional (by the way, I reduced the standard system font from 12pt to 8pt which is more reasonable for me because I want to be able to see us much info on the screen in a single shot as possible). It was very natural to work with Open Office, even many shortcuts are the same than in MS Office, for example to insert a row in Excel you do Alt+I and select row from the menu, something that I do very often en Excel and that I can do exactly the same in Open Office Calc.

Some may criticize that PCLinuxOS and even Open Office it is copying MS, but the truth is that this kind of similitudes makes very easy the transition from the MS world to the Linux world and that is very welcomed. I do not want to start learning how to use my office tools again, I want just to get rid of Microsoft and continue working in a nice and easy Linux environment like is PCLinuxOS and Open Office.

Resume
Ubuntu defrauded me with WIFI and was enough reason to drop it, I was greatly surprised by PCLinuxOS in all aspects and I decided to go for it. It seems as if I could do my every day work in PCLinuxOS!

Next step is to install it to HD!