This is one of 14 desktop distros I have been testing for our agency. We are moving every thing we have away from Microsoft. Linux has made some awesome advances in the last few years and MEPIS is one of the good ones. It has great hardware detection but does get a a glitch or so on SCSI and raid devices. The desktop has a very polished look in KDE. Being Debian based it is easy to work with. Wireless network drivers work when compiled and setup. Overall it runs everything we need including our student software. The built in firewall and clamav are dirt easy to use and keep things tight. Network communication tools are all functioning and we have integrated it on several remote sites on our LAN/WAN. We are still testing Linux distros but MEPIS has impressed me as a great desktop and has my vote so far. Testing has been on Dell, HP, old Compaqs, MPCs, and Systemax. The SCSI drive ID problem was on a 5 year old HP server. That my story and I am sticking to it.

SimplyMEPIS produces one of the most immediately useful distributions. It boots initially as a Live CD, then it can be optionally installed to disk with just a few more clicks.

SimplyMEPIS is definitely desktop oriented and was created out of frustration by Warren Woodford, who had problems finding a distribution that did just what he wanted it to do.

The only thing that MEPIS does not include automatically are non-free proprietary codecs and drivers, but it does make an attempt to have good hardware compatibility by including the non-free ndiswrapper, in an attempt to achieve decent wireless card compatibility.

MEPIS contains good, solid, well tested and supported software. Over the past year, the software has been based on applications available through the Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) 6.06 release. Because that software is getting dated and has not been updated with the latest software, MEPIS is moving back in the direction of using official Debian repositories, possibly mixed with compatible programs from Ubuntu repositories. The end result, whatever it becomes, is decidedly what makes the SimplyMEPIS experience. This is a unique distribution, not easily equalled. Definitely one of the top five distributions for desktop use. If you do not need Windows Media codecs in your distribution or you don't mind adding them yourself, this might be just the desktop system for you.

SimplyMEPIS is my default desktop system.