How to Kill PCLinuxOS in One Easy Step

Installation:

1) Start with an IBM Thinkpad R32.

2) Install PCLinuxOS 2007 from a LiveCD. Note that if you try to use the option to erase partitions and start from scratch, you'll get a message indicating that you should reboot first. Hm, cute.

3) Once installed, update the dern thing with Synaptic. Reload, Mark, and Apply.

Ok, now you've got your very own PCLinuxOS running and everything is groovy! Enable 3D Desktop effects and amaze your friends with the wobbly windows that didn't work in Ubuntu without manual xorg configuration. (when they ask why your focus window title bars are all blank, just change the subject)

And now, here's how we destroy PCLinuxOS:

1) Create a new network profile and activate it.

That's it. Voila. Easy as pie. Thanks for playing.

You will lose your graphical login manager upon restarting X. You will be able to start X manually after logging in to the terminal as root or another user, but alas, all is not well. A plethora of services will be off. You'll immediately notice the lack of any sound and the big error message indicating the lack of any sound.

To make things even more fun, your screen resolution might have dropped down a notch, making a brilliant desktop manager like KDE utterly useless because it can't resize windows worth a damn. This is especially frustrating considering how many configuration "wizards" in PCLinuxOS use the standard GIANT WIZARD DIALOG DO YOU WANT TO APPLY THE CHANGES OH YEAH WELL THEN CLICK THE GIANT YES OR THE GIANT CANCEL BUTTONS WHICH YOU WILL NOTICE APPEAR GIANTLY IN THE LOWER CORNERS OF THIS GIANT WIZARD DIALOG. OH YOU CAN'T SEE THEM BECAUSE YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION IS SET TOO LOW WELL SORRY ABOUT THAT BUT NOBODY CARES STOP BLOGGING ABOUT THIS STUPID CRAP!

A neat fix is to delete your network profile which will bring things mostly back to normal, except for your resolution, which will be impossible to set. Oh, and you can't login as another user without being prompted for a root password and then being shown the 3D Desktop settings dialog and NOTHING ELSE. Ever.

Imagine the sound of a hard drive being wiped clean, and you'll be closely approximating the sound waves that are vibrating my ear drums this very minute. This is an all new time record for an operating system eating itself in my experience. The sucker went completely useless after about 30 minutes of use.

Oh, it's "Radical" alright.

Next up: Fedora.