Hi Everybody,

Just a couple of questions about possibly installing from the live CD of Mepis. My wife's old P3 500 just assumed room temperature (died) and she previously had been using Ubuntu but didn't think it was "pretty". So, I have slapped together another box (P3 1Ghz, 512mb ram). I installed Suse Slick on it because it is still old gear and wanted a lightweight distro, but it came with almost no useful software. So, I am looking to change distros for her and in trying to narrow it down, I have tried the Simply Mepis live CD, and, IHO, it looks great. Everything was detected, it comes with flashplayer already installed in the latest Firefox (1.5) and immediately networked with my FC5/Slack box. I am considering going ahead and installing it, but have a couple of questions if someone who has done it will be so kind as to give me a pointer or two.

1. I believe Mepis is Debian based, so, am I right in assuming that all the apt-get install commands will work in Mepis (like they did in Ubuntu)?

2. Is there a good support community for Mepis, or is it a one man show (like Slackware, which I adore by the way, but a little too techy for my wife.)? I read an article on the creator of Mepis. Could Mepis be a "ship in night" distro and go away at some point?

3. If I use the "install me" option on the live CD, can I expect the resulting install to behave exactly like the live CD (which is brilliant.)?

If someone could give me a little guidance in these things it would be very much appreciated.

Bob

Yes, yes, and yes!

The Mepis community is both numerous and supportive, and some members have set up their own user guides that are very helpful (check out mepislovers.org). The install is very easy, and the result is in some ways better than the live CD--it's faster, for instance, and my winmodem is only picked up when the distro is installed, not on the live CD.

An excellent distro for someone who wants things to work out of the box, yet be able to get under the hood at any point. And, IMHO, the recent association with Ubuntu is only making it better, judging from the beta version of Mepis 6.

Good luck!

Thanks, JerryNew2Linux. I am certainly leaning that way. I might just install two distros. Everything I have seen so far certainly suggests that Mepis does indeed "work out of the box."

Bob

Hi I am a mepis user

yes mepis is debian based I think your wife is likely to use synaptic as I think the command line will probly be a little hard for her but I don't know if she has used it yet?

this is just my opinion there is good community support but there are 3 different forums mepislovers, mepis-website and linuxquestons. I think they should of just had just one forum, but support is still good. I belive the mepis user base is growing it's a new kid on the block


have not read this one "I read an article on the creator of Mepis. Could Mepis be a "ship in night" distro and go away at some point?"

I think that is unlikely to happen as long as it is popular, which it is not at the top but is no where near the bottom [look at distrowatch for that one]


"If I use the "install me" option on the live CD, can I expect the resulting install to behave exactly like the live CD (which is brilliant.)?"


yes if you use the live install CD the install will be the same if not better


my personal notes. it's the fastest distro I have come a cross yet I have kubuntu 5.10 386 and it boots way faster than that. it does not take long to boot up at all I think you will be very pleased by this

one of the things is that it comes with flashplayer and can play mp3 files and common formats, saving you time downloading and installing

the Live CD also makes life easer especialy if you mess things up like your boot loader. you will always be in mepis even if your hard-drive goes

you can say that the distro is defiently on the Level

it's an easy distro to use. I would personally recommend it to your wife


you might end up using it you self, well may be?


which verson are you going to use, there is a new mepis coming out soon

Hi

Thanks for responding. In the end, I did install and it set up beautifully. After just a little tweaking, it was set on my home network, on the net immediately, plays commercial DVDs, does video editing...the works. All of this in less than an hour on four-year-old gear. It is by far the easiest setup I have ever done. I can see it is great for my wife. She is definitely not a techie and she was using it like a pro in half an hour.

I really like the distro, but I am "geek wanna be" and I believe this distro would not present enough of a challenge to me to keep me occupied for long. I suppose that is why I am such a fan of Slackware (and Fedora because of its cutting edge technology). But I can certainly see myself using Mepis for everyday tasks.

A couple of things I would like to enquire about, though.

1. It only came with the KDE desktop and the wife prefers Gnome (less choice to confuse her with fewer desktop apps and a little easier to configure.) Is adding Gnome through apt-get a big chore? Does apt-get take care of the dependencies like yum does in Fedora?

2. I am going to be replacing the video card in her machine soon. How does Mepis handle new hardware?

If you (or someone) could guide me on these two things it would be much appreciated.

Bob

Gnome is not a problem to install using apt-get or the GUI front-end Synaptic. You can make it the default WM.

MEPIS has one of the best hardware discovery sections around. Check out mepislovers for a lead on things there about what works. I have no problems with an ATI card. Most use NVidia.

Use the Wiki at mepislovers after an install. It's pretty good for a place to start after a new install.

mepis handles most new hardware seemlessly, but (theres always a but), video cards are not QUITE so simple,
first off i recomend not going with ATi, your just asking for problems there, nvidia will suit your needs nicely (an nvidia->nvidia transition will be seemless and you may stop here)
next pop in the livecd and goto the INSTALL ME icon, but don't worry your not reinstalling. In there there will be an option to reinstall the X config, do that and then boot to your system. more than likely the nv or vesa driver will be at a much lower resolution than your used to so you will need to install the nvidia driver (apt-get install nvidia-glx) then edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to suit your needs, you may not need to do any editing at all.