SimplyMEPIS Linux 8.0
Certain distributions tend to get more press than others. SimplyMEPIS isn’t one of the ones that gets drooled over by the media the way that Linux Mint, Ubuntu and others do. I include myself in this as a journalist since this blog has been up and running since early July and I’m just now getting to a review of SimplyMEPIS. It’s a shame though as SimpyMEPIS has quite a bit to offer the desktop Linux user as you’ll find out in this review.
First a bit of background about SimplyMEPIS from Wikipedia:
MEPIS was designed as an alternative to SUSE Linux, Red Hat Linux, and Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake) which, in the creator Warren Woodford’s opinion, were too difficult for the average user. MEPIS’s first official release was on May 10, 2003.
In 2006, MEPIS made a transition from using Debian packages to using Ubuntu packages. [1] SimplyMEPIS 6.0, released in July 2006, was the first version of MEPIS to incorporate the Ubuntu packages and repositories.
What’s New In This Release
SimplyMEPIS 8.0 is based on Debian Lenny. Here’s a sample of what’s new in this release:
Linux Kernel 2.6.27.18
KDE 3.5.10
OpenOffice 3.0
Firefox 3.0.6
Bind 0.9.6
IPv6
(11 votes, average: 4.27 out of 5)
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Hi Jim! Glad to see that you got that ROUND TUIT so that you could review SimplyMEPIS 8.0. Just in the nick of time, too! SimplyMEPIS 8.5 repositories are already being built! Have not checked MEPIS Lovers Forum today to see if Warren has made any kind of announcement about the first test release, but some ambitious MEPIS Lovers have already been playing with the new repos, and they DO have KDE 4.3 in them, and several hundred packages have already gone into the new repository, so a new test release is certainly less than a month away, possibly days away, possibly even announced. (I will have to check later to see where that’s at now).
As far as SimplyMEPIS itself, it is an extremely conservative release. The raw release is nearly as old and drab as Debian Lenny is, but the positive aspect of this attribute is that you can nearly always count on it to work.
One thing you did not bring out is that the MEPIS Lovers Forum is possibly the best distribution specific user community out there. None of the fighting found at PCLinuxOS, sidux, or even Ubuntu. The average age of forum members is somewhat older than the average, which results in both a high level of experience, which in their case also translates into level headed minds, who keep close watch on the forum to answer questions, but also to deflect conversations that can build into ugly arguments.
That same forum has established and built a very nice community repository, which contains a lot of newer, but still well tested software. There is a test version, where you can evaluate and help test the latest packages, to make sure that they work correctly, and there are more conservative, well tested out repositories, which include both free and non-free (with and without source code) applications. You can get newer kernels there, new browsers, multimedia applications, and so forth. This community repository helps keep MEPIS current with very little sacrifice in quality.
Concerning menus and appearance, those are some of the most common complaints about MEPIS as shipped. Again, the forums are helpful for working around and modifying these things.
As is, MEPIS is a very solid, stable desktop system. As my stable system, I have found nothing quite like it – not even Mint is as stable as SimplyMEPIS. For communities, there is no better distro specific community than SimplyMEPIS.
I do use other distros – sidux and antiX, in particular, to scratch my itch for the latest stuff. But not even Debian Lenny does better than SimplyMEPIS in providing a stable desktop – I got SimplyMEPIS to install on one system where Debian actually had problems figuring out how to handle the disk!
So, like anything else, SimplyMEPIS has its pros and cons. For what it is designed to do, however, I know of nothing better!
[...] of the ones that gets drooled over by the media the way that Linux Mint, Ubuntu and others do. More here Overall my experience with SimplyMEPIS was pretty positive with a few things that I didn’t [...]
First, a nit pick. You included the two paragraph quote from Wiki twice. Is that for effect?
After trying 30+ distros in the past year, from the old reliables (Slackware, Fedora, etc.), to the trendy ones (*buntus, Mint, etc.) and some lesser knowns (Zenwalk, PUD, etc.), I settled on Mepis because, for me, it provides the best mix of features and flexibility that I have been looking for. It is a very strong possibility that most of my PCs will be running Mepis soon. In fact I just blew away Win XP Home on a laptop I recently acquired and replaced it with SimplyMEPIS 8.0.6.
Your comments about the lack of Gnome and the “drabness” of Mepis default background are is nit picking. When yo review a distro that only come with Gnome, are you going to consider the lack of KDE a negative? Personally, I prefer the “drab” background of Mepis to the “exciting” backgrounds of Mint and/or *buntus. I find them annoying, the green slime of Mint and the poo brown of *buntu. Besides, being only graphic files, backgrounds can easily be changed. All you have to do is to right-click on the desktop, select “Configure Desktop”, on the Backgrounf page click on “Get New Wallpapers”. That will put you at a site with hundreds, if not thousands of backgrounds. I’m sure even you can find something “interesting” there. While distro hopping, I copied the wallpapers that I liked to my Mepis install. I even imported a few Windows wallpapers.
As to Mepis being dated, that’s OK by me. The main reason I am not using one of the “up-to-date” distros is that many of them have become too Windows-like in trying to protect the user from themselves by not allowing explicit root signon. Some may call it a security feature, I call it PITA.
@ Brian Masinick:
Well I hope that we aren’t going to have a Linux Mint situation where I do the review and two weeks later a new version is out. Heh.
Glad to see that you think so highly of the MEPIS forum. I try to include links like that so anybody new to the distro can quickly and easily find feedback from more experienced users.
@ dragonmouth:
Thanks for catching that edit error, Dragon. I have removed the duplicate text from the Wiki quote. Talk about embarrassing.
Yes, you are quite right the background can be changed. I was just remarking on it in the context of how the distro is branded. I think it could be done in a more exciting or at least interesting way.
Glad to read that you are enjoying SimplyMEPIS though, thanks for sharing what you liked about it.
Just a few comments…
I’ve been using Linux as my main desktop system since the late 90’s and have tried MANY distros over the years. Mepis is the one I always come back to for my main systems. If you want a good Lenny system with more up-to-date packages and easy-to-use GUI system utilities, this is the way to go. I’ve seen very few systems where Mepis didn’t “just work”. I teach a high-school technical class and all of my systems are running Mepis 8 with WindowsXP (which came on them originally) running inside VirtualBox. No virii, no worms, no wannabe-hackers messing up my systems. If the virtual XP gets trashed, I just unpack the tar archive and it’s fully functional again in 5 minutes. Mepis can be a little boring because it’s so stable and based on Lenny, but that’s NOT a bad thing. I experiment on other systems, but Mepis stays on my WORK system.
@ Zipslack:
So you’d consider it more of a workhorse rather than showhorse eh Zip? Yeah, I think I agree with that.
@ Jim Lynch:
Oh, you can dress it up like a cheap coctail waitress and put in all the bells and whistles to make your friends go “Oooh…aahhh!”, but I’m more interested in reliability and function. I even run it on an old P2-400 with 256MB RAM as a spare “travel” unit (i.e. – I won’t cry if it gets broken/stolen). It’s a shame plain-jane Debian isn’t this easy to install and maintain.
My time is valuable, so I want a system that works well with minimum tinkering…I LEARNED on Slackware, but I USE Mepis.
Excellent points, Zip. Makes sense to me. Sort of like picking a good spouse. Beauty might be momentarily satisfying but after that there needs to be more at the core of the other person.
If KDE were my preferred desktop and I wanted a “go to” system either Mepis or PCLOS09 would be my choice. Mepis has its foibles, but it is carefully done and it works very well in my experience. (Yes, menu structure could be cleaned up.) The significant difference between PCLOS and Mepis has to do with their repositories, since both make use of apt-get, which is a very good thing indeed.
And I’ll second Masinick on the quality of the forum, which is no small thing and PCLOS09 has a similar feel, I think.
If you like Lenny a bit cleaned up in a business suit (as wild as Lenny ever gets, I suspect), Mepis is the place to go. Of course there is naughty sidux.
My “go to”? Well, I prefer Gnome or Xfce, so I use Ubuntu 8.10 which also “just works”, so I leave it alone! Boring can be a very good thing when there is work to be done.
I’m with some of the previous comments:Mepis is so solid, stable, and easy to use that it’s boring–and that’s good. Work bought me a netbook and I installed Mepis to dual boot with XP. Mepis found EVERYTHING–Bluetooth, wireless LAN, sound, webcam, microphone. I don’t have time to use anything but the wireless LAN, but it all works. Durn thing went boring on me.
Sometimes boring is nice. I like the OS to be totally boring and out of sight if I have work to do.