MEPIS basically claims to beat all other distributions at the major aspects of desktop-computing, as it claims to feature “unique hardware detection and configuration superior to any others” as well as being “pre-configured for simplicity and ease-of-use, you’re productive in a matter of minutes” and it claims to “include the very best business and multimedia programs”. Such huge claims gives huge expectations and that’s exactly how I intend to review this distribution: I expect nothing less than the perfect distribution, in all desktop-aspects - especially, as always, in the field of user-friendliness!

MEPIS is an Ubuntu-based distribution, using KDE for the desktop. It includes a vast array of free software (not just free as in open-source, but also closed-source free such as Skype). The first public release of MEPIS came in May 2003 and development has seemingly been going strong ever since.

The primary force behind the site is Warren Woodford, who founded the MEPIS Linux in November 2002, due to frustration of the several distributions he had tried and inspired by his experience as a NeXT developer, he began working on a distribution that “just works”. More developers have joined in later on.

The distribution was originally based directly on the Debian-tree, but has lately moved to use Ubuntu as its base. The distribution is free of charge and can be downloaded directly from one of the mirrors as a combo live-CD/install-CD.

It is possible to pay for a subscription, which gives access to special versions tailored for various purposes and to early test-releases. The fees primarily benefits paying for Warren’s full-time commitment to the development of the distribution.

Expectations
The distribution claims a lot so the stakes are high, but knowing of the main-developer’s past and his level of commitment, this distribution wants to be taken seriously, and that’s how I’ll review it. I expect nothing less of a setup from start to end with not a single loose end in any desktop-related field, be it multimedia, communication, web-browsing or linguistics.

Hardware
The hardware for this review was my own personal workstation. That I had to do actual work on this machine while having the OS installed only made it more significant for me that the system was capable of all the things I use Linux for.

This is the setup used in the review:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
• Harddrive (root, swap and home): 40 GB Maxtor 7200 rpm
• Harddrive: 2x 250 GB SATA-drives, running hardware RAID-0
• Graphic: NVidia GeForce 6600 GTX Dual-head
• Monitor: 2x 19″ Medion-monitors, one using DVI, other VGA
• Keyboard: Logitech Ultra-X
• Mouse: Logitech MX1000
• Optical drive: NEC DVD-RW ND-2510A
• TV-Tuner: Brooktree BT878-based

Getting the distribution
Getting it was no big deal. There where enough mirror-servers to choose from, all high-speed, although I find it peculiar that downloading via torrent was not an option, which probably would lead to less load on the mirrors, especially when a new version is released.

Official instructions on how to burn the ISO in various operating-systems were available, although the instructions were written in a very compact English, possibly not very helpful for the people who actually need these instructions the most. I found out much later that much better documentation were available on the site by looking in the official documentation-wiki, but how would any new visitor know that the same site contains ‘competing’ documentation spread around the site and under such confusing names as “MEPIS Community”? Read the rest of this entry »