PCLinuxOS to Get a 64-bit Version

Bill "Texstar" Reynolds, founder and lead developer of PCLinuxOS, said in a blog post today that a new 64-bit version is in the works. Details are sketchy at present, but users have been asking for this for a long time.

Reynolds said that he has finished building the first 1000 packages. First he "upgraded gcc to 4.5.1, glibc 2.12.1, xorg 1.9.x then started rebuilding the libraries." Once those are complete he'll begin on the desktop packages. Unfortunately, there is no estimated time for release because there are still about 12,600 more packages to go before making ISOs and testing.

This comes on the heals of several quarterly updates for the various 32-bit versions of the distribution released around the period from the last week of October to first week in November.

PCLinuxOS is a popular distribution usually sitting within the list of top 10 distributions in distrowatch.com's Page Hit Ranking. Early versions were originally released to a limited test group in mid-2004 and followed by wider public releases late 2004 and early 2005. Its popularity peaked in 2006 and 2007 but began to wane in 2008 when illness forced Reynolds to take some time off and new releases were delayed several times. PCLinuxOS has been slowly regaining some of its position since Reynold's return and the long awaited 2009.1 release. Current versions, 2010.10, are available at www.pclinuxos.com.