MEPIS 8: An Early Look At Beta 5
Submitted by srlinuxx on Thu, 11/27/2008 - 14:47.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for years now. However, having worked with both Fedora and SUSE as well, I’ve always been very open to the idea of trying out other distributions. I recently stumbled upon MEPIS Linux (pronounced ‘meh-pis’ — similar to “memphis”), and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to pick up and use. I’ve decided to share my experiences with the latest beta of the upcoming MEPIS 8.
Installation
The installation of MEPIS was very easy. Since I was using a fresh hard drive, I started with the ‘automated’ installation, which set up separate partitions for MEPIS, swap, and my home directory. This is a particularly exciting default partitioning scheme, since it gives me the ability to reinstall MEPIS (or to install a new flavor of Linux) without losing my documents and configurations.
Configuration
Almost painless…
Except for one large roadblock, getting MEPIS set up they way I wanted was very easy. MEPIS comes with KDE 3.5, which has a host of useful applications. Since this is a beta release of the next MEPIS, I expected to see the latest version of KDE. However, KDE 4 had a very rocky release, and since KDE 3 is still a very highly regarded windows manager, I understand why it would be worth keeping around for a while.
have to say my experience mirrored yours except no problem
I installed Mepis 8 to see how it compared with earlier versions. I have used Mepis off and on for a couple of years but the last version was quite some time ago.
It worked for me right out of the box with no problems on the 32-bit version. The 64-bit version still needs some work and also needs some codecs so the rest of the stuff will work. I am using the 32-bit right now and it handles all the things I need and very quickly. A pleasure to use. I kept a copy of the 64-bit and will try that one to see how it develops.
BlueWhite64 is still the best 64-bit I have found. Works very well across the board and if there are any problems the response has never taken more than 12 hours. Highly recommend this one.
Warren is Debian leader ? Less is more success ? Both ?
Knoppix used to be Debian leader when livecd was introduced. Now it is too slow with over 4.5 gB of apps in the distro. Memory management using swapfs could have speed up Knoppix?
Warren is Debian leader now with a midi distro. But Scsi emulation and ethernet/wireless/cable(dhcpcd) installation has to be more streamlined, meaning redirect must be used to avoid any one app depending on another app when you install operating system.
So, less is more, to become more successful.
Less apps.
Less ISA/PCI/PCIe/AGP/DDR/north and south bridge/etc, use USB
Less kernel drivers, ethernet drivers, more scsi emulations.
or Less ethernet, more USB.
Less new apps, more older apps. Memory usage methods could speed up Debian?
And 3G modem ready for netphones? Seek partnership with cellphone manufacturers?