why doesn't MEPIS have many variants?
 

I know antiX is the only variant ["fork?"] of MEPIS, and I wonder if there is a reason. I don't know; possibly MEPIS users are so satisfied with MEPIS that they feel no need to make variants.

I had this thought because I am in the middle of switching from SimplyMEPIS to a heavily modified antiX. (Or should I consider antiX not a MEPIS-based distro but a type of MEPIS? The former seems obvious--antiX is substantially different.) AntiX works as a base for my modifications, so I don't need another variant. It just suddenly dawned on me that every other Debian-based distro I can think of, especially Ubuntu, has about ten thousand variants ["forks"?], so MEPIS is slightly unusual for having almost none.


(Why am I giving up SimplyMEPIS, you might ask? I hesitate to fully open that can of worms, but the short answer is, the bitter march of progress made a certain major design change inevitable for MEPIS 11, and that change was highly inconvenient to me.)

Interesting point! To me, antiX is it's own Debian derived distro with some links with Mepis rather than a Mepis variant. There used to be Danum Canteras which was the first KDE4 flavour of Mepis. Not sure of the current status of that. I have heard of proposed Gnome respins etc. but nothing seems to have taken off like antiX has.

Sometimes it just pays to do one thing well. Mepis and Antix is a smaller community and is not as large a community as Debian or Ubuntu. Their membership is one of the courteous and helpful on the net IMO.

I have no complaints.

Meta Package installers in AntiX and smxi make it a breeze to pretty much weave/spin what you want.

Warren pretty much decides what is included (after feedback from members) in Mepis before a release.

Because it is easy enough to install a different DE or WM, which is basically what the multitude of Ubuntu variations are.

Mepis does it right.

That's true. In both MEPIS and AntiX, I had no problem installing KDE Trinity.

When MEPIS 11 came out, I tried it, but already knew I would have a huge problem with it: MEPIS uses KDE and was inevitably going to switch to KDE 4. I don't like KDE 4 and refuse to use it, mostly because of the Plasma Desktop. The Plasma Desktop is two things--(1)a bloated memory hog (as far as I can tell from my experience with it); (2)a kludge, a blatantly unnecessary complication of what already worked (KDE 3.5).

This isn't MEPIS's fault, because any KDE-using distro has no choice but to adopt KDE 4. (I've never seen a distro that uses or even includes Trinity. I intend to make one as soon as I get the hang of remastering.) But I don't have the time or energy to learn how to control the Plasma Desktop even if I wanted to. (I don't. KDE 3.5 worked and I was comfortable with it.) I've successfully installed Trinity in MEPIS, and that worked. But I thought it seemed a good idea to install Trinity on a MEPIS that had never had KDE 4 at all (I was seeing messages about files being diverted or renamed or something), and the closest thing I could find to a MEPIS without KDE 4 was antiX.

I use Debian stable (squeeze) which Mepis 11 is apparently based on. I dabbled with Mepis for a period of time, but i do not get satisfactory results. I have integrated intel graphics and desktop effects work out of the box with almost all distos. debian Squeeze is not one of these; it requires a upgraded kernel and xorg from backports but works fine after this. I used Mepis and doing the same, i could not enable desktop effects. The Mepis community suggested i use sgfxi/smxim, but i had no need in Debian and i don't know why i shoud need to do this for Mepis. Little things like this is why i think Debian is a much better distro to be based on. Ubuntu has many distros based on it, and well, you may bring that up to argue with my opinion, and while that may be facts, i don't have many things positive to say for Ubuntu, and i don't think the distros based on it will last for a very long time. In saying all this, i think Warren may have a similar opinion in some respect, after all, Mepis used to be based on Debian but moved to Ubuntu and then back to Debain. wise choice in my opinion. So there's my 2 cents. I am very fond of Debian, and like Mepis a fare bit too; but i would like to see Mepis meet debians compatibility, otherwise, i wouldn't switch, and for reasons like this, when devs are considering creating a new distro; if they choose to base it on another, i can understand why they would rather choose the MORE vanilla Debian over Mepis or another; and i type more in capitals because it's important to realize that although Debian is close (to my understanding), it isn't purely vanilla.

I am still running an 8-year-old copy of Mepis on my home computer, but as i type this am downloading Mepsi 8.0.15. What should i be aware of, especially in light of what you are saying about the various versions of KDE?

http://forum.mepiscommunity.org/view...hp?f=7&t=32107

Might help.

Thanks. I proceed with eyes open.

MEPIS 8.5 and beyond uses KDE 4, so don't go further than MEPIS 8.0.15 unless you're comfortable with KDE 4's Plasma Desktop or can put in the time and effort to learn it (I chose not to). It's hugely different from KDE 3.x. If you upgrade to 8.5 or higher but don't like KDE 4 (as I don't), your alternatives are either to abandon MEPIS for a distro that doesn't use KDE, or to modify your MEPIS to use KDE Trinity (an updated KDE 3.x).

Thanks for the tip. I am currently at a cyber cafe having booted to the Mepis 8.0.15 that i downloaded on Wednesday. The KDE desktop is fairly familiar to me, and, based upon advice here and elsewhere, i'll be content to stick with this desktop for awhile. The next step is to get this onto a bootable flash drive for greater convenience.

Bear in mind that as Mepis 8.0 is based on Debian Lenny, security updates will no longer be available as of Feb 2012.

Yes, i am aware of this. Remember, i'm just now upgrading from an 8-year-old distro, which i never once upgraded. Maybe it's just dumb luck, but i never had a security problem. Still, i appreciate the heads up.