pclos documentation portal

PCLinuxOS KDE 2012.02 was recently released. Folks (like me) who already have the distro installed (going back, at least, to 2010.07), and who have been regularly updating, don't have to re-install or anything. Here's the release announcement.

One of the new things in 2012.02 is the PCLinuxOS Documentation Portal. If you're updating from a previous installation, you can get it by going to Synaptic and installing pclos-docuportal.

Once installed, it shows up in the main menu under Documentation > PCLinuxOS Documentation Portal and under Internet > PCLinuxOS Documentation Portal.

Starting it up runs a script that gives you a list of web sites where you can find PCLOS and Linux information. The script is located at /usr/bin/pclos-docuportal. When you select a web site and click the "OK" button, the web site opens up in Firefox (or your default web browser).

Here's what it looks like when you start pclos-docuportal:

These web sites could easily be bookmarked in your web browser, but I guess it's a nice touch to have them all collected in one easy-to-access spot. Looks like a very helpful thing for people who are new to PCLOS and/or Linux.

I found it interesting that a link to online man pages was included. It takes you to linuxmanpages.com. I personally prefer to use the man pages that are included with most Linux systems by default, but sometimes it's good to find man pages online; and, Texstar, the PCLOS developer, is not fond of man pages. As I recall, most (if any) man pages are not included in a default PCLOS installation, and you need to install the coreutils-doc package, and maybe the man-pages package.