I have just installed Mepis 6.0 on an Acer Aspire 1362WLMi laptop, Sempron 2800+, 1024 RAM, 100Gb Western Digital Scorpio drive. Dual booting with XP, very straightforward installation having prepared partitions with Partition Magic. I tried Ubuntu last year and had a struggle getting the resolution set to 1280 X 800, so it was a relief to be able to set it at the outset in Mepis (pressing F3 on install splash screen).

The IPN2220 wireless card gave me the same problems that it did under Ubuntu, but I was prepared for it this time and ndiswrapper works fine. Still can't get WEP working, so I'd be interested to hear if anyone has suggestions; currently running MAC filtering, but I'd prefer a bit more security.

Great stuff, I'm impressed with Mepis!

After liking what I saw about Mepis 6.0 on my dual-boot desktop, I decided to install it solely on my IBM Thinkpad T21 (PIII 800 MHz, 256 Mb RAM). The install itself went okay, but when I'm booting up, sometimes it freezes after the splash screen (the one that says "press F2 for details"). Other times it will not shut down completely and I have to press-and-hold the power button.

Other than that, biggest issue has been wireless. I'm using an Airlink 802.11g PCMCIA card. For some reason, it calls this ra0 instead of wlan0, so I can't do anything about it with mutilities. Through a terminal, I used iwconfig and ifconfig to set the ESSID and WEP key. This made both power and link buttons light up but I still wasn't getting a connection to the internet. Every so often, it would connect but then disconnect within a few seconds. At least I think it connected - it was never on long enough for me to ping. But strangely, when it connected, the message in the system tray was "eth0 connected." Why is that? eth0 is my wired ethernet port, and that works fine. But that wasn't even connected when I was trying wireless.

While I was connected wired, I installed Kwifimanager - slick program, but it didn't help me get wireless setup. I have to study the wiki some more.

Just a brief addendum to my post above - the nvidia driver was easier to install than in Windows (Geforce Go 5200).

Mepis was the first linux distro EVER to install and just work with my pcmcia zyxel wireless card (ive tried all the major distros over the last year). i am thrilled. compaq presario 2402us. but since that was just today i havent much longterm experience but that alone was impressive. i did note one lockup on boot at the splash screen as someone else noted. uh oh. well since its the only thing working with my setup for wireless , i guess its time to get to know mepis!

I got wireless working on my laptop! After much searching, I thought maybe the Airlink card simply wouldn't work. I rebooted with my older Gigafast 802.11b and voila! It was recognized as wlan0 - I configured it and it seems to be working fine!

For those who have replied (and anyone else just browsing), please tell me, how does your MEPIS laptop experience compare and contrast to your MEPIS desktop experience? I have heard that laptops usually generate more Linux frustration than desktops and I would assume that to be the case for MEPIS as well.

Thoughts? Input? Thanks again for your replies!

Has anyone had issues with the KDE printer setup tool?

I have an old Lexmark X125 USB printer which worked fine under Redhat 8. But with Mepis I can't get a peep out of it.

The driver is installed using /dev/usb/lp0. I know that in the past I had to change this to /dev/null (the only way to get the driver to work) but the KDE tool doesn't allow me to change this path.

Also tried a serial printer - HP Officejet 635 - and, although it responds, it is painfully slow.

I guess what I am saying is - how do you get a printer to work under Mepis?

Regards,
Lee

Well yes, my laptop was more difficult to set up than my desktop. But when I think about it, it's mostly because I am asking more out of my laptop. Wireless was a challenge to get working, but then my desktop is wired ethernet. The dedicated volume buttons and scrolling on my laptop took extra steps, but my desktop doesn't have dedicated volume or scroll buttons. And I'm still trying to get my laptop to sleep when I shut the lid, but I don't suspend on my desktop. So without these things, Mepis was pretty easy on my laptop!

i never used it on a desktop (mepis), but a couple problems im working to resolve are: skipping audio when streaming (might be a wireless issue) and getting the scroll portion of my touchpad working (the utility to adjust it hasnt been helpful thus far). mepis and most distros ive tried on the compaq (v2400) all work fine with built in networking, video etc..its just the pcmcia card thats been an issue in my case, and mepis "just worked", im committed for life now

I have Linux Mepis 6.0 installed on both my desktop and laptop. The desktop installation (dual boot) was a breeze and Mepis runs without issue. Laptop installation was simple, as well. The only hitch was getting the wireless card to work. I was not familiar with ndiswrapper (but am now) and it took a bit of time. I received good advice and instruction through this and the mepislovers.com forums. The laptop installation runs a little slower but runs well.
No problems.

I have Mepis 6 installed on a Compaq 2200 series and had no problems with the install or the operations of it. All I had to do was go in and blacklist the Broadcom drivers and poof instant wireless. I had 3.4.3 on it before and after the upgrade got a better battery life by 30 minutes so that is a good thing. And no difference with the installs of 6 on my desktop at all maybe just a slower install is all but that is the only thing that I noticed.

Hi

I installed Mepis 6.0 on my laptop, which is a CDC Premium (You probably don't know it, is an Italian producer I guess). I had some problems at installation stage (had to change one boot option) but at the end ALMOST everything works fine. ALMOST means that the only issue I encountered and wasn't able to fix regards SOUND: my sound card is recognized by MEPIS (snd-hda-intel) but I can't get any beep from it. I wrote to many linux forums, but at the moment I got no solution from my problem. Will probably write to ALSA soon.

Has anyone had any experience with MEPIS and Dell laptops? Specifically, I am thinking about getting a Dell E1705, so if anyone has used MEPIS with a Dell E1705 then I would really like to hear about your experience!

I have Mepis 6.0 on a Dell Inspiron 8000 (about 5 years old). PIII 1ghz, 512mb RAM, 60gb HD, GeForce2 Go 32mb.

Everything installed fine for me, took me about 10 minutes to get my wireless working (Linksys 802.11g with Speedbooster Router and PCMCIA cards). I also have a Linksys wireless print server hooked to a HP OfficeJet 7210 that all I had to do was plug the IP address of the print server.

I am really only having two problems with my installation. The first is a problem I knew I would have before installing: I have a PocketPC that I am unable to sync, no big deal. The second is using an external monitor to view video. All video players I have tried display the video files as a blue screen (The sound works fine). All other video out features work perfectly.

System: IntelPIV 3.2, 1024MB DDR, nvidia 64MB go5100, Belkin F5D7011 PCMCIA wireless, Toshiba 120GB HDD
PB EasyNote 5315 laptop
My knowledge on linux: very limited and a newbie from windows xp background

Installation: Easy. But found few things difficult. Like choosing the keyboard(few options for GB), language(No british English), Unable to specify the location correctly. I had to change it manually after the installation. However it was not too tough or impossible. I was able to install the operating system appropriately.

Hardware detection: I am very much impressed with hardware detection. So far the best among the distros I have tried(ubuntu, kubuntu, opensuse, freespire, fedoracore).

Applications: There was lots of applications installed on the computer. Most of them which I dont use. I deleted several desktop applets like acquarium(annoying), weather(annoying), system monitoring applets (clustering and ugly on desktop). I did not like the arrangement of applications in menu. However I can adjust with that.

Updating and choice of packages: I found everything it was necessary for me. Nvidia drivers were easy to install. But my wireless card stopped working after updating with the latest linux image. I have not rectified it so far. I am sure I will be able to do it. Otherwise it is alright. I am very much impressed with the default availability of alien and possibility of installing rpm and deb packages

System settings: Impressed with Mepis utility and tweaking tools. I felt that feature was lacking in other distros as well.

Stability: I always wanted a debian system after testing several distros. Mainly because I prefer debian packages which dont need several versions(specific for distros) and its stability. I liked ubuntu for its stability. However I wanted KDE which was more beautiful and had more applications. I tried Kubuntu on my laptop. However it broke down several times within days(problems with xserver and hanging while shutdown). So far I am impressed with mepis for its stability. Only once it has hanged my laptop. That was not after installation. It was before installation to harddisk. When I was booting from the livecd the xserver any not start and it hanged. But so far so good. I have been using the os for few days now. So it is too early to say anything about it.

Desktop: Mepis' lost to all other distros I have tried in this category. The desktop was very ugly. Not neatly arranged. Menu and applications was also not helping either. However it was easy to delete all the unwanted applets and configure the desktop with new themes, background etc.

Overall: I like it. I would be looking forward to a more beautiful mepis next time. If the stability is going to be maintained like this then definitely this is my distro.