Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Using SimplyMEPIS 11.0

The MEPIS distribution has been available even longer than antiX, which became available in 2006. MEPIS has been available in public form since May 2003, and the work started even before that, in November 2002.

Warren Woodford, the founder and sole developer of MEPIS, has a long professional career that spans an incredible forty five years or more in time, is noted for outstanding attention to detail and quality, a conservative approach by today's standards, resulting in excellent software that just works.

SimplyMEPIS is always a pleasure to use, and the current release is no exception. This is, by no means, the newest possible software that you can get. For that, go over to something like Gentoo, Sabayon, a new project under development, such as the very nice Mageia, due for its first release in June, currently in Beta testing. For something you can simply count on, won't waste a lot of your time with needless changes and defects, is simple, straightforward, and functional, it is hard to beat SimplyMEPIS.

Yes, you may be able to find something else that is also stable. Yes, you most certainly can find something newer and fancier. But only distributions like Debian and Slackware, which also tend to be very conservative, well tested, and "older", with mature, tested software, can compare to SimplyMEPIS, but SimplyMEPIS adds value to the Debian proposition. It includes a complete system that is well tested, well integrated, well documented, with a user community behind it. Debian has many of these things, but it is the foundation for solutions like SimplyMEPIS, not necessarily a complete solution in itself, and that is where MEPIS really excels - it is ready to go and it works well. I keep mentioning it, but I will do so again, I recommend this software for a complete, easy to use desktop system.

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