Submitted by MEPIS has released SimplyMEPIS 6.0. This is the first public release of SimplyMEPIS to incorporate an Ubuntu foundation. Based on the Dapper LTS package pool, 6.0 is designed for stable long term use and support. Screenshots here.
Mepis 6.0 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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that Ubuntu doesn’t?
From the homepage
*SimplyMEPIS allows you to test and try the software before you install to your harddrive
*SimplyMEPIS includes the very best business and multimedia programs
*SimplyMEPIS features unique hardware detection and configuration superior to any others
*SimplyMEPIS is pre-configured for simplicity and ease of use, you’re productive in a matter of minutes, not hours.
Thanks, but I asked this question after I read the homepage. Because items 1, 2 and 4 can easily characterize Ubuntu, and item 3 is useless without some facts (like examples of hardware not supported/autoconfigured by others). I’m not bashing MEPIS or prejudiced against it – I just honestly wonder whether it’s worth the download for me.
Ubuntu from 6.10 Dapper also has a combined Live/Install CD so you can try before you install.
AFAIK Mepis puts all the codecs and non-free stuff without license or permission from owners and the creater of Mepis is based in the US so if any of these owners decided to sue him he could be in big trouble 😐
Edited 2006-07-24 07:46
I downloaded Mepis 6.0 on Friday after hearing that is the most user friendly Desktop OS(some say a close call betn. PCLOS).
Pre-Install Woes:
I burned in a CD and on trying to boot in my Dell D610 and it gave some Hardware errors. It has WinXP Professional in its SATA HDD.
Now this laptop boots w/o issues Live CDs, Ubuntu Dapper, Kububtu Dapper, Knoppix 5.01, Knoppix 4.01, Dream Linux(sans networking or access to the Windows HDD).
New Downloaded ISO:
So I threw the burnt CD to the trash can, re-downloaded the Mepis ISO from one of the mirrors burnt a new CD and now used my HP Pavilion A430N desktop. After checking that the Live CD was working(I was not able to mount my HDA1 and HDA2 which I can when I use Knoppix) I thought that I would install it on HDB.
I had a secondary Maxtor PATA(7200 RPM) for my Linux experimentation. I loaded Suse Linux 10.1 in the Maxtor, and after some initial issues with the Updater and I was able to install SMART and download some upgrades. I wanted to add Mepis 6.0 to my Linux arsenal.
Install to HDB:
Used QTParted to create a /root 20 GB partition a 1GB swap partition and assumed the remaining 130+GB is the existing Linux Suse. After the s/w partitioned, it asked me if i need to replace GRUB on the MBR(which was the Suse GRUB 1.5). I said yes.
Post-Install Woes
After I rebooted it now takes nearly 20s to load GRUB after the POST process. With SuSe the GRUB gets loaded 5-7s. Then the show-stopper is the following about the following error when I enter the user ID and password(both root and non root)
Error setting up inter-process communication for KDE. Message returned was
Could not read network Connection List
.root/.DCOPserver_Mepis Computer_0
Please check if “dcopserver” program is running.
I am not able to go further. I am not able to access my SuSE partition nor I am able to enter Mepis. Thank God that I am able to boot Windows.
Can anybody help.
I agree with your sentiment 100% (and your subsequent posts).
I posted the same basic comment on Digg a couple of days ago and was modded down. I guess that’s where the Mepis fans get their news
.
I tried the distro awhile ago and it really seemed like a “duct taped” distro. The hardware detection was good. And, it had some strengths, no doubt. But, they packaged user tools with the distro that did not work.
What do they offer on top of Ubuntu? Who knows? Their web page damn sure won’t tell you.
— deleted, wrong place —
Edited 2006-07-24 07:20
Simplymepis comes with a lot of programs pre-installed (all multimedia types are playable out of the box) and nvidia-graphics cards are easy installable. And it looks more ugly than Kubuntu.
He pays for them I think.
Let’s hope he does
I know it can be changed, but why does it seem that every distro I try has a blue theme? Do they all have to look the same?
Because they like MS a lot
Why oh why does it continue to have the aquarium in the kicker?
Just for the shear hell of it I’m downloading it and will take a look. Looks like it might be fun and I’d be interested to see if the likes of MP3/AVI/MPEG etc. playback do indeed work out of the box so to speak.
It took me about 50 minutes to install, get connected (I am typing this using firefox under the MEPIS install), configure my locale, language, printer, LAN (including samba), CUPs, network printing, internet access, full office suite, multimedia, fonts, all drivers, and update the repositories listings. I did have to search around a bit for libdvdcss.
From 0 to 100% fully working with all connectivity and a full suite of current applications in under an hour!
is it just me or does it seem like a bad idea to base a distro off of a distro thats based off another distro?
im currently running old mepis on a laptop… somthing like mepis 4 i think, with debian sources for updating and new software. i think i will stick with this setup.
Edited 2006-07-24 12:46
I’ve been an Ubuntu user for nearly two years. But before that I was a SimplyMEPIS user. It was SimplyMEPIS that brought me over to the light side
In fact I just downloaded an ISO and gave the CD to friend of mine who’s looking for a KDE-based and newbie-friendly distro.
SimplyMEPIS will always have a special place in my heart. Congratulations on another great release.
Mepis rules because…
Has ndiswrapper preloaded, and only takes 2 seconds to apt-get wpa_supplicant, which is great for new linux users. The only confusing issue was that my broadcom network card had both ndiswrapper and module drivers loaded. After a while, I disabled ndiswrapper and used the broadcom module. WPA up and running! I am not sure if Ubuntu has many ndiswrapper drivers as well, but I must say being a current Slackware user, since 8.X, I believe MEPIS is a good OS for desktop/office usage. I installed this on my mom’s home office, as well as a home office client of mine. They both prefer MEPIS over Windows XP.
MEPIS is a great out-of-the-box-easy-to-confgure Desktop OS. Eventhough Xandros might have more features such as emulation, I chose MEPIS because open source alternatives negated the need for win32 emulation.
My only two issues is that I would prefer the choice of GUI during install. KDE is alright, but I prefer XFCE or GNOME. MEPIS needs to document exactly where their startup scripts are located, specifically the file for running local commands. In slackware this is /etc/rc.d/rc.local, however I could not find a script such as this in the MEPIS /etc/rc.d/ folder. Due to this, I had to create a script in /usr/bin for wpa_supplicant, and place a link on the Desktop. This means the user must connect manually. This might be a small issue, however wpa_supplicant automation would be great.
BTW, the Ubuntu recommendation is to edit /etc/network/interfaces, however that did not work.
Edited 2006-07-24 13:28
IMO multimedia is no better/worse on one distro that it is on any other distro beyond you may actually have to install some packages.
Use what you like…learn it, love it, go fanatic or zealot
Simple, Live-CD, Easy Install, Proprietary bits pre-installed.
What Mepis offers beyond regular Ubuntu:
1. Proprietary codecs / file formats installed out of the box (no need for an “Automatix” – big time saver).
2. A complete installation of KDE. Kubuntu is nice, but only comes with a subset of full KDE and common apps.
3. In my experience, superior HD detection, especially for older hardware or laptops. For instance, I have an old Thinkpad that is still usable (so why trash it?), and Mepis detects video perfectly, but Ubuntu fails.
4. Some extra nice GUI config utlities – Mepis OS Center makes it really simple to config network. It also has a nice way of repairing and/or installing Mepis’ video settings (which I had to do with an Ubuntu install – see above).
Disadvantages of Mepis:
1. Feels “heavy”. Not as fast as regular Ubuntu or Debian.
2. In my experiences with SimplyMepis, I’ve always ended up with a borked system when trying to install too many things from Debian (SimplyMepis 3.3 and 3.4), or from Ubuntu (SM 6 beta – still haven’t tried the official release) repositories. And this is with being as careful as possible, and trying to do regular upgrades, etc. I suspect that Mepis fails to maintain full combatibility with either Deb or Ubuntu repos. But, again, I haven’t tried SM 6 full release yet. For all I know, it might be worked out now.
3. The acquarium applet in the KDE panel by default. What a useless bit of memory eating eye candy. Why Warren Woodford choses to have it there by default is beyond me.
So, as with all Linux distros, their are pluses and minuses to Mepis.
2. In my experiences with SimplyMepis, I’ve always ended up with a borked system when trying to install too many things from Debian (SimplyMepis 3.3 and 3.4), or from Ubuntu (SM 6 beta – still haven’t tried the official release) repositories. And this is with being as careful as possible, and trying to do regular upgrades, etc. I suspect that Mepis fails to maintain full combatibility with either Deb or Ubuntu repos. But, again, I haven’t tried SM 6 full release yet. For all I know, it might be worked out now.
This is something I’ve been wondering about. It may be based on *buntu, but I wonder how compatible it will be with it’s upgraded versions or additional packages.
Despite all the praise it receives, the *buntu repos always struck me as being a little bit fragile, in terms of the lazy dependencies and those stupid meta packages (ie. want to install beagle in kubuntu? need ubuntu-desktop, which in turn requires a full gnome installation, instead of just mono the way Suse has packaged it). While they’re fine if you’re sticking with a pure *buntu environment, I never actually broke anything myself in Kubuntu, I wonder how robust Mepis will be with mix and match?
Well, it’s something new for them, bound to be a few bugs that pop up, I guess. Might be 6.0 on the version number but in reality it’s probably cloesr to a 1.0 release due to the new underpinnings. I’ll likely give it a shot over Kubuntu.
Thanks, that was informative!
what proprietary codecs/bits/formats are in mepis?
According to distrowatch.com mepis is now the 3rd most popular distro, and the most astonishing for me was the fact it was ranked higher than eg. fedora, debian, gentoo, and kubuntu (which is much better choice for desktop user in my opinion). Even if that ranking may be not in 100% accurate ( it doesn’t count the real number of computers running given distro but it’s based just on numbers of page hit) it looks like it’s one of the most often instaled linux systems.
And here is my quesion: WHY???
Good hardware support? Instalation from livecd? Packages from ubuntu? no, it’s not enough for me to try it.
Ohhh… maybe it’s just cool to have mepis cause it’s mepis?
Anyway, how is that name spelled? “me peace”? another hippie distro?
According to distrowatch.com mepis is now the 3rd most popular distro, and the most astonishing for me was the fact it was ranked higher than eg. fedora, debian, gentoo, and kubuntu (which is much better choice for desktop user in my opinion). Even if that ranking may be not in 100% accurate ( it doesn’t count the real number of computers running given distro but it’s based just on numbers of page hit) it looks like it’s one of the most often instaled linux systems.
Distrowatch has absolutely positively no correlation to install base. It is simply a measure of how many people clicked on the link for more information about a particular distro. I clicked on the Mepis link myself just to get an idea of the packages and version levels installed, I use it all the time for that purpose.
Given the buzz around MEPIS migrating to *buntu as a core over the last little while, it’s not surprising that it’s generated some interest. The project site itself isn’t equally spilling over with deailed information either, which is what sent me to Distrowatch.
It’s sort of like the linux equivalent of an auto show. The high end exotics and flashy new models generate the biggest crowds, but it has no relevance to the number of people actually driving them.
Greetings…
In ’02 Because of Knoppix became enamored with Debian & APT (before that, for the previous few years was using the more mainstream, RH, SUSE & Mandrake.
In late ’03 (Nov) because of the Buzz tried the first Mepis and was very impressed. For me at least, here was a distro which required very little additions & mods except of course for libdvdcss. Java, flash, codecs, etc, even the spellcheck in the editors were setup & working… even a noname TV card (that was a a simple script) And it was a liveCD with a very good installer.
Debian, Woody & Sarge (& now Etch) were of course my favorites & my standard.(GeniOS is another great distro for a fast Sarge) But I too am sometime lazy or need/want spontaneous gratification.
SimplyMepis & ProMepis were also great. ProMepis because it had both KDE and Gnome, But as time went on, all would/could run
into issues with misaligned repositories, especially if looking for newer stuff and not aware how to pin or backport.
Ubuntu (& its progeny) better organized & maintained, had those problems too at least earlier ones. I don’t know for sure, but IMHO it has matured, Dapper is is probably the better Sid.
If you want the newer things without doing the work yourself.
This is why I think Mepis chose to align themselves closer now to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu has the buzz, because of Corp support. I consider it an intermediate & Mainstream distro like SUSE or Fedora. But not that different or far away from a pure Debian.
I have been using the Beta’s & RC’s of SimplyMepis 6.0 for several months (have not yet tried the final) and have to say I am very impressed and have had no issues (that I could not very easily work out) on any hardware that I’ve installed on.
And again SimplyMepis is my favorite to recommend or install for newer Linux users. (general or power users) — PCLinuxOS & Kanotix/Knoppix are my next choices. Still Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Fedora, Slack etc may appeal to some better.
Now Ubuntu (& its Progeny) is a great distro, the better Sid, if you do not want to do as much work, Etch & Sarge are are better if you want tested & stable Debian.
As in the very first Mepis. To me at least everything seems to be in the right place, and ready to go with minimal if any mods or alterations (but easily done) If not done automatically on install, drivers for ATI, nVidia, HP printing & imaging, CUPS, Samba, Mail, Winmodems, Wireless, ndiswrapper, TV, firewall (turned on by default) can be handled via scripts in the Mepis OS Control Center.
“So far” have no issues or complaints…………
Really worth a look for those that maybe interested.
BTW Like Ubuntu Dapper for libdvdcss (encrypted Dvd’s)
As root (with a net connection) “/usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh”
ak
Does MEPIS still has server applications installed by default?
Does It still has all that clutter right on the desktop and KDE panel?
thats two actually, I had one
what proprietary codecs/bits/formats are in mepis?