PLUG homepage -> Articles -> Ten Reasons For Trying SimplyMepis Ten Reasons For Trying SimplyMEPIS By Buster Ellis, November 2004   These are the golden years of linux desktop systems. We'll look back one day and realize that this was the period of collective and creative effort that finally, finally, finally produced the desktop we had hoped for. I can say this after years of never quite being satisfied – arcane installs, multimedia limitations, persistent fine-tuning and web searches to make the system do what I wanted. But now we have Mandrake, Suse, Fedora, and my latest love, SimplyMEPIS, which absolutely shines. Here are my experiences with this Debian clone, and the ten compelling reasons why I think everyone should give it a try.   Reason #1: PRE-INSTALL TEST After downloading the latest iso and burning it, I put it into my CD drive and booted. I entered a password and was in. The desktop lay before me. And why is this important? I knew all my hardware had been detected! Remember those installs when you found out after all the work that your mouse wasn't functioning, or there were no graphics? As well samba found shares, my Internet connection was up, my sound worked and I could play TuxRacer with the LiveCD. I was impressed. And I knew I'd have no problems with this distro on my hardware. Here's my 3 year old system by the way: 1 Ghz Pentium III 512 MB RAM Asus motherboard ATI Rage 128 All-In-Wonder AGP Microsoft scroll mouse SoundBlaster Live HiSpeed DSL with router A very nice system when it was built a few years ago! Anyway, if your hardware does not work with the LiveCD, move on to a different distro. At least you know this one isn't for you.   Reason #2: EASY INSTALL The install is easy and graphical. By the way, easy is good. I happen to like my camera's auto focus, my dryer's auto shutoff, my car's automatic transmission. And I like the easy install of Mepis. So please no lectures about learning, tweaking, and optimizing. You click a desktop icon while your LiveCD system is running, and it leads you through a few fairly easy steps. Two issues for me – the partitioning tool and my mounted partitions. I can't comment on how good QTParted is for partitioning. I had previously used Mandrake to set up /, /home, and swap because of a lesson taught to me by my wise father many years ago – easy is good. So it may or may not be adequate. And the installer's inability to format the selected partitions stumped me till I remembered that the LiveCD had mounted every partition on the hard drive! It was a simple matter to right click the appropriate icons and “umount”. Formatting took place, the passwords were written, the time zone was selected, and so on through the usual steps. All proceeded in an orderly and did I say easy fashion? After the software was installed I rebooted, removed the disc, and pretty well the same desktop presented itself. And everything worked. As easy as it gets.   Reason #3: DEFAULT SELECTION Nothing needs to be changed to use this system. KDE is a favourite of mine, the kernel is a 2.6.7, the two browsers, Konqueror and Mozilla are what I'd choose, K3b is what I use all the time. Even the included bookmarks surprised me, because I found the BBC and CBC already there. Samba is installed and works with no configuring or reading of manuals. The wallpaper is fine, as is pretty well everything. There is an attention to detail that will surprise users. Not that it can't be changed, but you don't have to. It works well right out of the box.   Reason #4: BROWSER PLUGINS About a year ago I did a slide show for our club on finding and installing browser plugins. Mepis means I don't ever have to do this presentation again. Mepis includes these plugins already - Shockwave Flash, RealPlayer, Java and Quicktime. At shoutcast stations either RealPlayer in Konqueror or XMMS in Mozilla popped onto my screen, and best of all, they both worked. I went to see movie trailers on the web, and for the first time in my experience, I could watch them in Linux. No messing about. Click and watch. It's not that we can't install plugins, but life is better if we don't have to.       Reason #5: MEDIA READINESS What can I say? Making no changes whatsoever I could rip CDs, copy CDs, play CDs, play mp3s, turn mp3s into audio discs for the car and probably more. I didn't have to set up the software, or link the hardware, or change permissions, or download codecs. I could do these things right after the install. And if it can be done this way, it should be done this way. At least in my world. The only configuring I can recall doing occurred first when I went to copy a CD of mine for the computer in the other room. K3b didn't do a web CDDB lookup. (Easily solved.) And I had to play with Kmix to make the sound loud enough to hear. Done. Now all I had to do was use Mepis, not approach it as another problem to be solved.   Reason #6: PACKAGE MANAGEMENT Debian people will tell you that there is nothing as good as apt-get for installing, removing, and finding dependencies for software packages. They are not quite right. Synaptic, based on apt-get, is better. It's better because it has an easy search procedure, it's graphical, and it requires no memorizing of commands. My first task after installing SimplyMEPIS was to su to root in a terminal and do this: apt-get update to make sure my computer knew about the latest programs. And then: apt-get upgrade to make sure all my software was up-to-date. And then: apt-get install synaptic so I would have the best tool in our solar system for ease of handling software packages. And it's rumoured that at latest count there are more software programs available in the Debian repositories than there are lawyers in Hollywood, but I think this must be an exaggeration. Synaptic alone is an excellent reason for trying Mepis.   Reason #7: CURRENT SOFTWARE The repositories that Mepis links to are a clever mix of stable, testing and unstable – a balanced selection of solid and current. It's not cutting edge experimental, but it's a long long way from Debian Woody. For example OpenOffice is 1.1.2 rather than the very latest 1.1.3. Mozilla is 1.7.2 rather than 1.7.3. I see this as a positive personally. Mepis uses current, tested software without the undiscovered bugs and conflicts of the very latest.     Reason #8: FRIENDLY FORUMS There are two welcoming forums for Mepis users that seem to me to be both civil and helpful: http://www.mepislovers.com has about 10,000 posts so far, and there were 25 on site when I just checked. So it's active and nicely organized. http://www.mepis.org/forum has 436 on line as I write this! This is the elder of the two forums. Lots of information - try the search. If you need help, these forums are available.   Reason #9: PLEASANT FEEL My system with Mepis is agile and smooth – no mouse hesitations, sharp bright colours, pretty quick loads from the hard drive, no odd pauses. This is entirely subjective of course, but the system simply feels right. I suspect Mepis has that magical blend of kernel, software and defaults that can   live together in blissful harmony. Or maybe I've been drinking too much Tim Horton's coffee lately.   Reason #10: QUEEN DEBIAN SimplyMEPIS is built on Debian, maybe the greatest of the linux distributions. If you check the one month “hits” chart on DistroWatch.com, you'll note that 4 of the top 7 most popular systems are Debian or Debian based. Debian has thousands of deb packages and legions of package maintainers, three separate package levels, and endless philosophical debates about what should and shouldn't be done. In other words it's a huge, complex, worldwide family that is trying to ensure that there will be good free software to run almost any computer on the planet. And for years Debian has had the advantage of apt-get. SimplyMEPIS has taken Debian's great base of packages, the best package manager, one of the latest kernels, hardware detection, a wise choice of software and defaults, preloaded plugins, attention to detail, and an easy install, and produced a linux distribution that the time-challenged can use right away, and the linux enthusiast can tinker with forever. Mepis will be on my computer for a long time. I mean, not only is it good, but any time I want, I can update to newer software with a Synaptic click of the mouse. ©1999-2006 Peterborough Linux User Group. 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