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

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.

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 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.

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

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!

See http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/forum/index.php?webtag=DLRFORUM&msg=177.1 – SimplyMEPIS 8.0.10, an incremental update, has been announced.

Just last week I threw MEPIS 8 on one of my machines to give it a run. It replaced Mint 7 KDE which was just too much for the 1.6 ghz Pentium M and 768 MB ram so a 3.5 release of KDE was very much a PRO. Install went great and I was very please to see when I did the initial available upgrades that it took Firefox to a 3.5 level version. Sweet! I had planned on having to do that manually or rely on a 3.0 level release. I’ll have to swing by the forums and check them out as those menus do need a little rearranging and I plan on running a second monitor on this install soon.

Add that this release is based in WV (Go Mountaineers!!!) and I think this one is a real winner! Got my fingers crossed that KDE 3.5 will continue to be a supported option as KDE4 is just too much for some older but still very functional hardware.

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.

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.