Mepis 6.0 has been released

[fos]

I just downloaded the final release of Mepis 6.0.

It is running very well from the livecd. Video, usb, hp printer support, ISDN, & audio all worked without any manual setup. In the media menu, there is a download site for the commercial dvd video drivers with a warning that it might not be legal to use them. I have yet to try them out, but eveything else works.

I am seriously considering replacing LN 3.0 on my Mini-ITX box with Mepis. I am very fond of LN and have some misgivings, but the HP printer support is better with Mepis. I can utilize the black only ink cartridge in draft mode. I could never enable that option with LN. I may try a permanent install.

The new Mepis 6.0 seems pretty polished. If you want a Ubuntu based system, with a functional KDE desktop with everything working (based only on a 30 minute test) give it a try.

fos....

[fos]

Well, I installed Mepis 6.0 on my primary box. I have to say that everything works. The only screen resolution available is 1024 x 768. I'll have to fix that. I DL'ed several missing packages that I like last night such as VIM, emacs, & g95. I tried to use synaptic to get mc and zsh this morning. For some reason the Ubuntu archive was not responding, even using apt-get. Maybe they are updating?

I have firefox and thunderbird configured to my liking. My USB flashdrives pop up on the desktop when I insert them. Something they never did with the older version of KDE in LN. I obtained the dvd libs for commercial DVD video. It works very well, no skipping, dithering, pixilating, or freezing, even on my Via M10000N mini-itx system. Very nice.

Maybe I will get comfortable with Mepis as I did with LN. If not, I still have the LN 3.0 install disks.

fos...

[RedAlpha3]

The only way that I could change monitor resolution with Mepis 6 Betas was to choose a higher resolution on Live CD bootup before it was installed to the hard disk. Other suggested methods failed.

The new Mepis has trouble booting up at all! Maybe a bad copy! Looks quite hungry for resources too. It seems that bells and whistles come at a price.

[fos]

// bells and whistles come at a price....

You may be right Pete, I have had no luck increasing the resolution now that Mepis is installed. I'm not through yet though.

I have 512 MB of ram and a 40 GB hard drive on my mini-ITX system. It runs as well as LN 3.0 and better than Windoze did. So far it recognizes the resources better than anything else I have tried. CentOS did just about as good, maybe the next release.

I can live with the screen resolution if that is the only problem I have, since I have low vision anyway.

fos....

[fos]

I now have Apache, mysql, & php set up and operational.

Now I need to get Crafty downloaded and setup. I have gnuchess and xboard but I prefer Crafty. With LN, it was a simple click and it was installed.

fos....

[stafio]

I too had a problem with increasing my resolution. The worst part is, I was stuck at 800x600. I opened up the Mepis Utilities and Selected Mouse and Display and then the Monitor tab. I saw that there was no brand/model of monitor selected here. Perfect, I thought...I'll select my monitor here, restart x and then I'll be set. I was wrong. After selecting my monitor, I was able to choose a higher refresh rate, but still had a maximum resolution of 800x600. It's not like I have some obscure monitor either - it's a Samsung SyncMaster 750s. I was able to fix it by opening up a terminal and running "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg".

That's the biggest problem I've had so far, but I must say that's a really poor experience. I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with Linux sticking with Mepis for very long if they encountered my situation. The Mepis site says "an OS for the 21st Century" at the top...I figured that a 21st century OS would be able to handle something like this a little bit better.

[fos]

Hi Stafio,

I'm still using the "default" display setting. Other than that, everything in Mepis 6 is working. My latest addition is Qcad. I never could get the manual to display correctly directly from Qcad with Debian. I could always view it from /usr/share/doc but it was a nuisance. It works fine with Mepis. I had to add kchmviewer last night to view the manual for vBulletin. Their manual is in html/chm whic is a Windoze type. :( It is not available for download in any other format.

When I have more time, I'm going to find a work around for the display issue. That may be awhile, I'm configuring the new forum software and school starts back in about a week! :(

fos....