benjaminq
05-14-2006, 11:21 AM
Just gave the beta3 a spin as a live-CD:
Hardware detection: Wow. Setting up the WLAN for a card that needed a windows ndiswrapper driver: going to the Mepis OS Center, typing the ESSID, reinitialize wlan0, DONE. Touchpad and wireless mouse in paralell wer both correctly set up, X was fine, I didn't check the winmodem ...
Tuxcard: 3D OK.
Sound: OK, however, artsd produced some load (13%), disabling full duplex did the trick. Then everythig OK.
Printer setup: a no brainer.
Multimedia: libdvdcss is lacking, *.wmv won't play (although wincodecs are installed), apart from this EVERYTHING played. Amarok and Kplayer and Kaffeine and the KDE centric user says thank you.
OpenOffice: the annoying èé and ê that with LN always needed reconfiguring the locale was set up right right from the start.
Applications: quite a good selection, synaptics will do the rest, KMail is absent Thunderbird is present. A plf repository is in the sources.lst waiting to be activated to get the "illegal" stuff, universe and multiverse are enabled by default. Digikam + kipi Plugins are missing ... and some of my favourites but most of them are there. I'd say it is the package selection that comes closest to my preferences. There is not much to throw away and the stuff that is missing just doesn't fit on the one CD ...
Hotplugging: usb mass-storage HD went like a charm, haven't checked the digikam
Config Tools: too much Kubuntu, the system settings are like in Kubuntu and are thus a little bit dumbed down, but you can always type kcontrol to get the real thing and to disable the many kDE services that are enabled from the start (since knemo produced some load as well, might be different with a HD install). MEPIS OS Center is good for what it does. What it won't do is setting up a simple firewall, manage kernels and some goodies some of us know from Adminmenu. But all in all, all I had to do was setting up the WLAN (see above) and then the system was ready to go. In LIVE-MODE!
I think, I wait for the final, although I can hardly imagine that it gets any better, I haven't checked my good old "volume-out" problem when sending bigger attachments (>450 kb) yet, this was the only and persistent showstopper for 3.4-3, if this is absent, I will substitute one of my two LN installs with MEPIS.
I am quite impressed. It blows Kubuntu away by far, so if you like KDE, the chance that you don't have to look any further for you next Linux-desktop is quite high with MEPIS.
I really found no big glitches in the short test of the LIVE-CD, if they continue to iron out any until final and Dapper will be supported for 3 years on the desktop, the only thing that lacks for MEPIS will be that Warren finally holds true to his words and put all of his MEPIS OS code under the GPL (he said he wanted to do so, not long ago) ... otherwise, its close to perfect for a single CD Distro.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10 on my machine (your mileage may vary).
Benjamin
Hardware detection: Wow. Setting up the WLAN for a card that needed a windows ndiswrapper driver: going to the Mepis OS Center, typing the ESSID, reinitialize wlan0, DONE. Touchpad and wireless mouse in paralell wer both correctly set up, X was fine, I didn't check the winmodem ...
Tuxcard: 3D OK.
Sound: OK, however, artsd produced some load (13%), disabling full duplex did the trick. Then everythig OK.
Printer setup: a no brainer.
Multimedia: libdvdcss is lacking, *.wmv won't play (although wincodecs are installed), apart from this EVERYTHING played. Amarok and Kplayer and Kaffeine and the KDE centric user says thank you.
OpenOffice: the annoying èé and ê that with LN always needed reconfiguring the locale was set up right right from the start.
Applications: quite a good selection, synaptics will do the rest, KMail is absent Thunderbird is present. A plf repository is in the sources.lst waiting to be activated to get the "illegal" stuff, universe and multiverse are enabled by default. Digikam + kipi Plugins are missing ... and some of my favourites but most of them are there. I'd say it is the package selection that comes closest to my preferences. There is not much to throw away and the stuff that is missing just doesn't fit on the one CD ...
Hotplugging: usb mass-storage HD went like a charm, haven't checked the digikam
Config Tools: too much Kubuntu, the system settings are like in Kubuntu and are thus a little bit dumbed down, but you can always type kcontrol to get the real thing and to disable the many kDE services that are enabled from the start (since knemo produced some load as well, might be different with a HD install). MEPIS OS Center is good for what it does. What it won't do is setting up a simple firewall, manage kernels and some goodies some of us know from Adminmenu. But all in all, all I had to do was setting up the WLAN (see above) and then the system was ready to go. In LIVE-MODE!
I think, I wait for the final, although I can hardly imagine that it gets any better, I haven't checked my good old "volume-out" problem when sending bigger attachments (>450 kb) yet, this was the only and persistent showstopper for 3.4-3, if this is absent, I will substitute one of my two LN installs with MEPIS.
I am quite impressed. It blows Kubuntu away by far, so if you like KDE, the chance that you don't have to look any further for you next Linux-desktop is quite high with MEPIS.
I really found no big glitches in the short test of the LIVE-CD, if they continue to iron out any until final and Dapper will be supported for 3 years on the desktop, the only thing that lacks for MEPIS will be that Warren finally holds true to his words and put all of his MEPIS OS code under the GPL (he said he wanted to do so, not long ago) ... otherwise, its close to perfect for a single CD Distro.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10 on my machine (your mileage may vary).
Benjamin