The current state of MEPIS
 

As we are well into the fourth quarter of 2008, the MEPIS project has been doing extremely well. Earlier in the year, Warren Woodford, the founder of the MEPIS project, had to take on a consulting assignment to pay the bills, and for several months, the only MEPIS activity was the occasional security update that trickled in from the Debian Etch Security repository. SimplyMEPIS 7.0, released just before Christmas 2007, was a rock solid system, however, and it has remained extremely stable all year long.

In the Spring of 2008, several MEPIS community members decided to get together to create a Community Repository to provide more current versions of software applications than those provided by the SimplyMEPIS repositories. This gave the project a shot in the arm and encouragement to keep going.

Meanwhile, one of the separate, but sanctioned, projects that did very well all year long was the antiX project. Originally conceived as a kind of return to the MEPIS-Lite look and feel, over the course of the year, antiX took on a character of its own and it has been a tremendous addition to the MEPIS family. Releases 6.5 (the initial release, if my memory is accurate), followed by M7.0, M7.1, M7.2, M7.5 all occurred between last summer and this past fall. Currently just starting development is M8.0, which has already had two internal test builds that are being worked on collaboratively with anticapitalista through his forum site. Test 2 is excellent already.

The SimplyMEPIS 8.0 project is moving along very well. There have been five Beta test builds with ISO images released, and the hardware support has improved with each build. The packaging quality was excellent, even with the initial build, and when the release candidate comes out, it may well become the release unless anyone finds defects not already uncovered. Beta 5 is excellent; I can attest to this.

I recommend having SimplyMEPIS and antiX available on your systems. If possible, use both of them. Otherwise, SimplyMEPIS is the best stable desktop system in existence, in my admittedly biased opinion, and antiX is the most flexible, usable, and fast Live CD system that can be installed to USB or disk - together, they make a tremendous pair!

So, is Warren back to MEPIS full, or close to full, time?

What would it take to allow him to concentrate on MEPIS? Does anyone have even a rough idea of his financial needs?

Is there any efficient way to automatically send him small, insignificant-to-me/us, sums every month? I'm thinking I could afford $5/mo. on some kind of automatic debit plan; provided the transaction fee, if any, didn't eat up the contribution.

I wish Mark Shuttleworth would start a (as yet mythical) "Shuttleworth Linux Diversity Grants" program. IMNRHO, all the money he has put into & behind Ubuntu & Canonical has distorted the marketplace. I mean that, before Ubuntu, distros' reputations depended primarily on their technical excellence, à la "The Cathedral & the Bazaar"; now, marketing money is part of the mix, & reputation depends both excellence & advertising. No where near as bad as how M$ maintains their position, but I see some parallels. If I had my way, he would have the Shuttleworth Foundation fund an irrevocable 5 year annuity for Warren at, say $50,000 per year. And do it in a way that it would be tax free to Warren, the same as the Nobel Prizes are.

I haven't touched Mepis since some bad experiences with the design of the installer in 6, so take this for what you think it's worth.

If Warren chooses to use the Ubuntu repos, I hardly see that Mark Shuttleworth should also be (part) funding the project. I've had some (plenty of) concerns about the gorilla that is Canonical since it emerged. Mark is a great speaker, and wins everyone over when he turns up, but I don't know that Canonical is necessarily good for the wider community.
Yes, I am a Ubuntu user, but can (will) move on easily enough.

Nope. From ver. 7.0 onwards, MEPIS has been using the Debian Stable repos. Next (8.0) version is using the really good Lenny (Debian 5.0). Other than Warren's solid skills, a good community has been growing in Mepis (Mepislovers, MepisCommunity...) and helping a lot with packages, artwork, debugging...


I was too a Kubuntu user (from Dapper Drake, 6.06) up to recently. Previously I used Slackware, RedHat and Mandrake/Mandriva, in this order. Before the release of Kubuntu 8.10 (with KDE 4.1 and related issues, I switched again to Mepis 8.0 beta. Now this beta is working OK in my desktop computer (AMD64, nVidia 7300), my wife's desktop (AMD Athlon, ATI card), her netbook (Acer Aspire One, intel Atom) and my laptop (Airis intel Centrino). All four are working flawlessly now with the same version of Mepis 32 bit. All them had previously several versions of Kubuntu (Hardy, Gutsy...). Slick transition in all cases (in fact, my wife did noticed only the splash change). Happy with KDE 3.5 until KDE 4 matures and all the applications can be available for it, specially Quanta.

Giving a try to Mepis can be worthwhile nowadays.

Eduard.

I'm not sure how it relates to the OP, but I have a hard time seeing how Ubuntu has damaged the Linux community. Several distros now have big money behind them---so what? As long as someone does not stoop to the business practices of--eg--Microsoft, then why do we care if someone tries to use their capital to bring Linux into new markets?

What would help the Linux community would be a consolidation of existing projects and an increase in developer support of the established distros--vs. proliferating new ones. There's no practical way to force the community to do this, but the application of capital certainly has an effect!!

At one point, Mepis was my #1 distro. Perhaps I will try it again.

Just curious, which MEPIS were you using, & to what did you move after MEPIS?


As for how Ubuntu has hurt the community, before it came on the scene, I could send a client to MicroCenter (sp?) w/ instructions to "buy a copy of MEPIS"; shortly afterwards, MEPIS was no longer on their shelves. I don't know if this is just a coincidence.

SimplyMEPIS 8.0 and antiX 8.0 in the MEPIS family
 

There is nothing wrong with Ubuntu, but I do not want any discussion of Ubuntu to sidetrack my discussion of SimplyMEPIS, especially the upcoming releases of SimplyMEPIS 8.0, now working nicely in Beta 5 form, or the also upcoming derivative work of antiX, now at internal Test 2 build of M8.0.

Both of these versions are looking really promising.

However, take your discussions of other distributions to topics containing those names. Otherwise, I will ask the moderators to pare this discussion down and remove topics that digress. I have been guilty of digressions from time to time, but I will always back off when requested to do so. Today I am asking people to discuss only the upcoming releases of SimplyMEPIS and antiX in their 8.0 forms in this topic.

Beta 5 of SimplyMEPIS works (confirmed) on Dell Latitude D600, Lenovo 3000 Y410, and Gateway 17" PA6A laptops, and as of Beta 4, all three of them even have full support of their respective wireless interfaces, which include the Intel Pro Wireless 2200 (D600) and 3945 (Y410) cards, and the Broadcom 4311 card (PA6A).

Test 2 of antiX M8.0 also seems to have similar levels of hardware support.

antiX continues to improve at a rapid pace, drawing a very nice balance between reducing the footprint and having decent ease of use. The first (6.5) release of antiX was mostly aimed at reducing the footprint. Since then, making the system more flexible has been a priority, one which has been greatly successful. Now usability and continued flexibility seem to be themes of the latest work, as well as improving the appearance. Give anti and the antiX community lots of credit for coming up with a really well balanced system.

Meanwhile, SimplyMEPIS continues to work at perfecting what SimplyMEPIS does so well - taking an already solid Debian core, adding a really simple installation program, including some very easy to use systems configuration management tools, then wrapping a Live CD around all of it so that it can be tested out and easily installed. To me, SimplyMEPIS does these things better than anyone else and hits their target square in the middle.

masinick,
Today's updates upgraded the kernel to 2.6.27-7.
http://www.mepis.org/node/14203

I'd have to say that's not bad for a "dying distro". I'm thinking MEPIS 8 final may be the best MEPIS yet.
Wayne

MEPIS 8 - Webcam stopped working with this version
 

MEPIS 8 - Webcam stopped working with this version


I have an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC laptp (dv9000)
with mepis 7, mepis 8 Beta5, Suse 11, and Gentoo 2008.0 multibooting.
With mepis 7, my web cam Logitech Inc. QuickCam Chat works fine with
the default web cam drivers.
In mepis 8 the web cam doesn't work properly (I think the wrong general drivers for this web cam are pre-installed. in Skype in the options area
the test gets a snowy three color horizontal bars and then the camera shuts off.
in Mepis 7 the driver listed in Skype is "Logitech Quickcam EC"
in Mepis 8 Skype lists "Camera (/dev/video0)"
Is there not a quickcam driver for Mepis 8 betea yet?

The drivers seem to be very Kernal specific. If you load the wrong one it crashes the kernal and you have to reinstall. (or reload the partition image, with parted) (6 minutes as opposed to 30 minutes and several days for all the apps and tools.

Does anyone know when the drivers will be available in Mepis 8??

KDE version 3.5.9 (4)
linux release 2.6.27-1-mepis64-smp
Machine x86_64 (AMD Turion 64x2
logitech Quickcam EC driver (in mepis 7)
model Qickcam chat

Not anywhere near dead, better than ever, in fact!
 

Both SimplyMEPIS 8.0 Beta 5 and antiX M8.0 Test 2 are among the finest systems you will ever use. Though there are a few things that the developers want to completely resolve before calling either of them "a release", both are tremendous, both, even in test form, never have bad packages. If anything is lacking, it is typically missing hardware support, which they try very hard to solidify BEFORE releasing their final versions. Warren, in particular, has done an outstanding job with this during the MEPIS 8.0 testing cycle!

I recommend going over to the MEPIS Lovers Forum, going into the MEPIS 8 Beta 5 issues list, and reporting the issue there, if it is not already reported. It is stuff like this that they are very serious about fixing before releasing, so make sure they are aware of the issue.

I have heard that a few people have had issues with the 2.6.27-7 kernel - some have had their best results with the 2.6.27-5 kernel.

I am sure that there will be AT LEAST one, if not a couple, of additional kernels before the final release, so that issues like this can be sorted out completely. Please give good feedback so not only you, but others, can benefit from the testing.