PCLinuxOS is still the living example of an alternate vision of the GNU/Linux desktop. Sysvinit, seatd and ConsoleKit2 in place of systemd, something that is unthinkable compared to about any other Linux distro today. Even the most conservative ones such as Slackware have given up, adopting things such as elogind.
But recently a series of unfortunate events unfolded. A few weeks ago, Tex, who is the leader of PCLOS, had his packaging computer quit on him. It took until recently to get back into working order, and led people like myself to wonder if PCLOS could recover. Not only that but the pclinuxos.com website went down, along with its forum, wiki, and other things. Things like this have happened before and lasted just a couple hours so I waited. Days later, it was still doing the same thing. Come to find out, the hoster of the PCLOS websites house had caught fire. Fortunately, he was OK, but this means that it may be quite some time before PCLOS' services outside of the mirrors come back online. Without any way to package things, and with the PCLOS websites down, you would think this spelled the end of PCLOS as we know it.
But no. Tex created his own forum on forumotion and thankfully to donations he was able to get his hands on another packaging computer. PCLinuxOS continues and even if our BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life) was gone I don't think that means PCLOS ends. In fact, PCLOS has become my grounds for packaging things. I believe PCLOS is fantastic; it's RPM-based, it's got all the desktops you really want (GNOME not included because GNOME is actually terrible for new and experienced users alike), and it's as free from systemd as the BSD's. I've done my part to try and keep PCLOS relevant by porting greetd and ensuring Wayland works fine. Even with these horrible recent events, PCLOS stays strong because quite frankly if there was no PCLinuxOS then Linux would be dead to me until I could make my own distribution.