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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See http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/forum/index.php?webtag=DLRFORUM&msg=177.1 – SimplyMEPIS 8.0.10, an incremental update, has been announced.
For those of you who have SimplyMEPIS 8.0, just do a dist-upgrade with either apt-get or with the synaptic package manager that is provided, and you should quickly have all of the changes that are included in this incremental 8.0.10 release!
I install anywhere from 300 to 500 systems a year between my HeliOS Solutions Business and The HeliOS Project. Yes Mepis is “boring”.
It’s also the ONLY distro I will put on an Enterprise system. When using any of the “Buntus”, I always had issues with broken stuff on updates but with Mepis, It is an install and forget system.
I will offer one criticism and I feel it is an important one. Warren, please make your wireless/networking mechanism a bit more intuitive. I am an “old hand” and it confused me for some time. In many distros, when I boot the live disk, the icon is present and it tells me wireless connections are available.
Do that, and you have the perfect Linux Distro.
Ken Starks – aka helios
I dunno. If you click the ad on the right side of this page for Linux XP, you are taken to a page that claims it is the #1 desktop OS.
I do agree with the general consensus here that Mepis is just another ho hum distro, and there is definitely a market for that.
I am still waiting for something to unseat Ubuntu 8.10 as my main desktop.
Jim,
Thanks for finally taking a look at my favorite Linux, a stable working system. Warren just released the 8.0.10 version. This was an official release. http://www.mepis.org/node/14222
In my opinion this was great to have a very up-to-date KDE 3.5 version released before moving to KDE 4 beta in a few day or weeks… The KDE 3.5 release is in the download mirrors, and torrents are available for the Linux users that want the stability of this final KDE 3.5 Mepis release.
Yes I am looking forward to the next release of Mepis. However saying I am ready for the next release, I shall be running several systems on the current release (8.0.10) to accomplish my daily work load…
I have been toying with Quake Live for a few hours each morning this week on my 64-bit version of Mepis 8. Mepis has been a good horse to ride, trying Quake live Linux port. I have won a few matches, but nothing great enough to place laurels on the wall. Yet Mepis 8 , works on my Premium Internet connection 50% as fast as my ISP provider delivers the service to my neighbors to the south “Arizona”.
Again thank you for taking the time to publish your review of this solid stable Linux Operating System, with its current releases of the popular Linux Software available in different repositories.
JR Namida
I use Mepis as a workstation building and maintaining websites and the like. I’ve come back to it actually since ubuntu-based distros (like Mint) can no longer run Kompozer do to ‘upgrades’.
Mepis flirted with ubuntu repositories for an edition or two but now thankfully they have returned to debian.
My first real Linux desktop was with Mepis 3.3.1. Unfortunately “upgrades” broke it. Sometimes installing updates on a package manager is a good way to muck up your system with no way to get it back to how it was before.
I agree that the menu list could be more elegant but its a good stable workhorse so I” keep it on my working box.
The network manager has been improved from Mepis 7 too, thank god. Still not as easy to configure as many other modern Linux distros tho.
Check out new SimplyMepies 8.5 RC2 review with screen shots and Download Mirror link.SimplyMEPIES comes with brand new KDE 4.3 with codeces, so it will be easy to use for new users. The detail can be found here
http://www.linux2u.co.cc/2010/03/simplymepis-85-rc2-is-available.html
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