PCLinuxOS, often shortened to PCLOS, is a GNU/Linux distribution, with KDE Plasma Desktop as its default user interface. It is a primarily free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 for personal computers aimed at ease of use. It is partially considered as a rolling release

Rolling release

In software development, a rolling release development model refers to a continuously developing software system; this is opposed to a standard release development model which uses software versions that must be reinstalled over the previous version...

.
The precursor to PCLinuxOS was a set of RPM packages

RPM Package Manager

RPM Package Manager is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the .rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself...

 created to improve successive versions of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux

Mandriva Linux

Mandriva Linux is a Linux distribution distributed by Mandriva. It uses the RPM Package Manager...

). These packages were created by Bill Reynolds, a packager better known as Texstar.