Tweak PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime into Full blown distribution

Textar and the ripper gang released the Minime version of PClinuxOS 2008 on 7th January 2008.

The PCLinuxOS Minime Wiki says that
The aim was to make a MiniMe iso that is a very basic KDE desktop cd without additional applications. It is designed for advanced users or for users who wish to learn how to customize their system with the applications and support files they want to use.
The release announcement says
Here is a little MiniMe 2008 (296mb) you can play with and customize the way you want. Comes with 2.6.22.15 kernel, Alsa 1.0.15 and a very basic KDE 3.5.8 desktop. This is a minimal LiveCD that is bootable, plus it can be installed. Add in your own background, window decoration, localizations, preferred applications and supporting libraries to fully trick out your desktop. In addition you can remaster your own custom version of PCLinuxOS. Have fun!
Well to really have fun, we need loads of other applications and some tweaks. Lets check what Minime offers and then we will go ahead and apply the required tweaks.
Minime main features are::

1. Window decoration is Linsta Squared.
2. Background is again Vista Aero inspired.
   
3. There is a utilities folder which contains easy links to some essential tasks like network setup (including wireless setup using ndiswrapper ) and Display driver setup.
   

Live CD:
The Live CD boot is exactly like that of PCLOS 2007, with a slight difference that network is not configured during boot. There is an installer to install the Minime version to hard disk. The devs have tweaked it a little and now we only have to specify the boot partitions during install. The user setup, root password setup etc are done on first boot from hard disk.
Note :: The network setup and Time Zone setup is left for the user to do as and when required :)


Hard Disk boot:
The first thing that hit me was the super fast boot from grub to KDM login prompt. Now this is expected as I only had a mini KDE and nothing else, even the time required for network setup was not there. Now I have a NVIDIA 6200 256 m card and fortunately PCLOS Minime provides an easy way to install the driver for it. However, the required drivers are downloaded from internet and by default network is not configured. It was easy though, the Utilities folder had an icon for Internet Setup and it took me to a wizard which made connecting to internet a breeze.



After that the NVIDIA driver install was also very easy, please check my earlier article at Techzone about it.

Now that I had my screen resolution set and internet enabled, I set myself a task to install the remaining essential software I use. Well installing software is a child's play in PCLOS.
I went ahead and installed the following softwares.

1. Flock web browser ( Its a rip-off from Firefox but has many extra features like easy integration with media and blogs ). Check out my article on Flock on Techzone.
   
2. The regular plugins like java, flash and adobe acrobat.
   
3. OpenOffice
4. Amarok ( libmad, for playing MP3, is auto installed)
5. Kaffeine ( with Win32 Codecs and libdvdcss2). The codecs not free in some countries including USA.
   
6. Digikam ( for getting pictures from Camera). Digikam also installs ShowFoto and excellent image viewer with basic editing capabilities.
7. Thunderbird email client with Lightning Calender extension.
   
8. ie4Linux and wine.
   
9. Ksnapshot for taking screenshots of my desktop.
   
10. Compiz Fusion for eye candy, it can be easily enabled in PCLOS Control Center.
    
11. K3B for ripping CDs and DVDs
12. unrar and pk7zip and lastly
    
13. KDevelop
    

More on Utilities Folder:
Other utilities include

1. Alsa config tool
2. Clock and Timezone Setup tool
3. Grub settings tool
4. A version of remasterme to create a custom LiveCD or a Live USB.
   

Conclusion:
I think Minime is a boon for people like me, who do not want the overhead of software like CUPS, bluetooth etc, but still want the user friendly interface of PCLOS.
PCLOS Control Center is a one stop shop for all system configurations, it mimics Mandrake Control Center and is as intuitive as the famous YAST from OpenSUSE. This is where we can make system wide changes, such as enabling or disabling system services, add or remove users to the system, configure the firewall, configure hardware, etc.
PCLOS promises to be radically simple and Minime gives a glimpse of that, surely we can expect a great distro in form of PCLinuxOS 2008.
What I miss in Minime is KDE4 packages, which I hope to find when PCLOS 2008 is released.

NOTE::
All the screenshots are taken from the Texstar's page on picasaweb . Thanks Tex.
EDIT:: Added Kaffeine installation.