“MEPIS Linux founder Warren Woodford began, a year ago, to migrate MEPIS from Debian to Ubuntu packages, and in July achieved the first Ubuntu-based simplyMEPIS release. In light of the recently announced Linspire/Ubuntu collaboration, DesktopLinux.com asked Woodford to clarify the MEPIS/Ubuntu relationship.”
I enjoyed this article. It’s nice to hear “from the source” every now and then.
It’s not hard to make a Linux distro by pulling pieces from a bigger distro project and elaborating here and there. I’ve never been impressed by Woodford’s public statements, and this is no exception. If you want to hear “from the source,” that would mean Mark Shuttleworth, who will tell you that MEPIS is an independent distribution not endorsed by Canonical or the Ubuntu project.
I’m currently looking for a good KDE distro, and MEPIS seems like a good effort. I wish Woodford would enumerate what he believes are the key differences between MEPIS and Kubuntu, instead of parroting over and over that Ubuntu is a GNOME distro. There would have to be some incredibly compelling advantages to using MEPIS over Kubuntu, because for me, a large and active community is the most important factor in choosing a distro. Kubuntu is part of a vastly larger community than is MEPIS, so I believe I will receive better community support (when I need it) if I use Kubuntu.
{I’m currently looking for a good KDE distro}
{I wish Woodford would enumerate what he believes are the key differences between MEPIS and Kubuntu}
I have found Kubuntu somewhat disappointing. I have a dual-boot setup and I have two partitions formatted as NTFS, and three formatted as ext3. I tried to install Kubuntu for Edgy Eft, and early on in the install to hard disk process the qtparted program crashed and I could get no further. I posted a bug report to Kubuntu about it, but nothing was done. This is a showstopper bug (you can’t install Kubuntu to HD because of it), and it was not even acknowledged.
I recently downloaded the Kubuntu Feisty Fawn herd 4 pre-release CD. The same bug is still there.
MEPIS doesn’t have this bug. Neither does PCLinuxOS. Both are therefore infinitely better than Kubuntu (because Kubuntu doesn’t even install).
Of the various “live CD, easy to install, KDE-by-default, high-activity” choices I have tried, namely Sabayon, MEPIS and PCLinuxOS, the latter is the best. MEPIS is dated, and both MEPIS & Ubuntu make it difficult to get working multimedia. PCLinuxOS doesn’t have a huge repository (compared with Debian or Canonical’s) but other than that one failing … if you want a decent KDE distro, frankly, I would recommend PCLinuxOS at this time. The 2007 release should be out by the end of this month.
Edited 2007-02-18 05:43
Every now and then I get swayed by the vast number of Ubuntu fanboys and I think to myself “hey, perhaps it finally lives up to the hype”.
The last time that happened was when Edgy was released, so I d/led it and tried to install it. It hung on partitioning. So I thought, hey “perhaps Kubuntu uses a different installer” and d/led that (I love DSL and cheaper by the dozen CD-Rs =) and tried to install it. At least the frontend for the installer was different I think but the result was the same. In the channel they recommended downloading the version with text installer but the last time I tried that (some versions back) it completely fscked up my MBR (testdisk ftw).
You’re not the first person I hear complaining about Ubuntu’s partitioning tools (by far) and I really wonder how a distribution (and its spin-offs) that emphasizes a just-works philosophy seems to consistently ship with partitioning tools that *don’t* work on a sizable number of systems.
It might be just a minority but other distributions don’t seem to have that problem.
Edited 2007-02-18 14:38
I think it must be in the release cycle(s).
Ubuntu and its derivatives are bent on the 6-month trend that is now common for desktop-Linux distros. This means that the latest and greatest within their respective scopes and targets will be available; but it also means that things (even the most necessary components) will break. Alot.
Don’t take it that “half-year is half-baked”, though. It just means that the latest and greatest are being tested out in these distros, the stuff that will make it, someday, into the status of “stuff that your distro can’t live without, no matter how old it is”.
However, I regret that most of the projects and companies which operate and release these “6-month” distros don’t consider releasing “stable” (as in “Debian stable”) distros. The novices who want a solid operating system to work with should be directed to an 18-month (like OS X) release, at the least, not to the rolling-release “testings”.
The 18-month release will incorporate all the stuff that has been thoroughly tried and worn out in the preceding three “half-year” releases.
Plus, it’ll be easier to handle for, say, distro-friendly hardware vendors (system76, for example).
However, I regret that most of the projects and companies which operate and release these “6-month” distros don’t consider releasing “stable” (as in “Debian stable”) distros. The novices who want a solid operating system to work with should be directed to an 18-month (like OS X) release, at the least, not to the rolling-release “testings”.
Ubuntu does exactly that. Their June 2006 (dapper) is their ‘stable’, which will be supported for some number of years. And any other version is supported for 18 months. I could install the one that came out in fall 2005, and it would be fully supported. Nobody forces people to download the latest version.
>I have found Kubuntu somewhat disappointing. I have a dual-boot setup and I have two partitions formatted as NTFS, and three formatted as ext3. I tried to install Kubuntu for Edgy Eft, and early on in the install to hard disk process the qtparted program crashed and I could get no further. I posted a bug report to Kubuntu about it, but nothing was done. This is a showstopper bug (you can’t install Kubuntu to HD because of it), and it was not even acknowledged. <
I have to agree, i haven’t had good luck with kubuntu either, while i don not encounter the installation bug, it just seems to generally be a buggy kde distro, lots of little odds and ends problems that make for a somewhat annoying user experience.
Ubuntu on the other hand (If you like gnome) is a much more polished, well finished distro.
I also have to agree that pclinuxos is a better choice if you want a less buggy and more fun user experience.
I always liked mepis until recently, it used to be a complete out of the box solution, put the cd in the drive, boot and you could play movies, music, view flash content, and java was installed and worked. This has all gone the way of the dodo (except maybe java). Still a nice disto, but lost a lot of it’s appeal to the person that is just looking for a nice backup system that they can actually get some work done with.
On a side note, sabayon is a nice distro to, just works out of the box and has most any application that you might want or need.
Edited 2007-02-18 21:58
Well, although I no longer use MEPIS and when I did, it was prior to the Ubuntu shift, I can tell you that it was the finest desktop distro that I have ever used and used it non-stop for over 2 years.
Kubuntu can’t even be compared to it as it is too buggy and it doesn’t include the non-free goodies and nice touches here and there (I know that this probably is a huge no-go for some, but still…).
And while the community is indeed smaller than Kubuntu’s, the users that hang out on MepisLovers.com more than make up for their smaller number. They are very newbie friendly and tend to have good user-maintained documentation on the website.
Their KDE implementation was second to none (though the default settings DO leave a lot to be desired, though – YES, I am talking about the damn fish tank on the taskbar!) and there weren’t none of these Kubuntu “patches” that makes its KDE close to the worst experience that I ever had since I started using Linux.
Don’t know if it is still up to the snuff these days after the Ubuntu shift and agree that Warren sometimes make some pretty bold claims that sound a little bit weird (such as his former stance towards the GPL) but he still makes good design decisions overall and puts out a hell of a good distro. If you enjoy using a Debian-derived distro with lots of value added in, I’d recommend you to give it a shot.
archtoad6: He therefore decided to use the Ubuntu repositories because of their balanced combination of currency and stability. Debian Stable being too far behind the curve, and Debian Testing/Unstable advancing too quickly and breaking too often.
Woodford: This part sounds dead on.
“Debian Testing/Unstable advancing too quickly and breaking too often” might admittedly be a problem for someone preparing a derivative distro but I really don’t think it’s a similar problem for end-users. In fact, Debian Testing makes a pretty good desktop choice — it’s not as buggy as Unstable and yet it’s relatively up-to-date. If users haven’t reported any big problems with the new packages in Unstable, these new packages migrate to Testing after spending 10 days or so in Unstable. Both Debian Unstable and Testing receive daily updates, bug-fixes and security updates.
Users can also “pin” their APT preferences to make Testing the default branch and to still be able to pull select packages from Unstable. This “pinning” also solves the occasional problem of missing dependencies in Testing because APT (apt-get, aptitude, synaptic, adept) is smart enough to pull automatically the missing depends from Unstable. Apt-pinning is explained here:
http://wiki.debian.org/AptPinning
There’s also a new distro called Sidux http://sidux.com/ that’s probably worth mentioning (although I haven’t used it myself). Sidux is a spin-off from Kanotix and it aims to make Debian Unstable safe for end-users. Sidux defaults to KDE and it has a live-cd with installer.
The development of Debian Live (the official Debian live-cd) might be also worth checking out in the future. After the upcoming Etch release Debian Live will probably start integrating the Debian Installer with the live-cd, making Debian a more attractive choice for those who want both a live-cd and a system installer on the same CD.
http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/
da_Chicken: “Debian Testing/Unstable advancing too quickly and breaking too often” might admittedly be a problem for someone preparing a derivative distro but I really don’t think it’s a similar problem for end-users.
I, too, found the remark you picked to be exceedingly amusing. The poor guys and gals over at Debian are really cursed. We get told all the time that their stable is too outdated, a complaint that certainly will be raised against Etch, too, once it is released. Yet their stabilizing aka. testing branch is already moving too fast for derivatives. It seems there is no “right” in this for Debian. Poor DDs…
Debian Testing/Unstable advancing too quickly and breaking too often.
nothing broke here…. awesome actually! If Debian manages to roll it out the door then GREAT and if they wait another three months then GREAT – either way etch ROCKS already!