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Yet Another Debian-based Distro: Mepis
emgarf writes "Today, on the first anniversary of the MEPIS Project, MEPIS LLC announced the release of MEPIS Linux 2003.10 for Pentium processors. MEPIS Linux is a desktop Linux that is designed for both personal and business users. MEPIS Linux offers a live/installation/recovery CD, advanced automatic hardware configuration, XP/NTFS support, ACPI power management, WiFi support, personal firewall, KDE 3.1.4, OpenOffice 1.1, Mozilla 1.5, and much more."
At last a versioning scheme unaffected by marketing! "2003.10" is actually informative!
I've long told my friend eric that what linux needed more than anything was an easy to install (think redhat or mandrake) debian based distro. Is this the first distro like that? I wish mandrake would stop using rpms and use debian's apt repository to handle software installing/updating, but alas it seems impossible for Mandrake developers to pull their head out of their ass and realize that rpms are not the way to go.
- tristan
What I'd really like to see is someone taking advantage of the capabilities of distros like Knoppix to create a bootable disk management tool.
I'd love to see a distro that I could boot with drive imaging software (local, network, with support for almost any kind of media,) partition editing (with support for non-destructive resizing of all filesystems including NTFS.)
Preferrably it would have both command line and good GUI based utilities (I find partitioning a disk to be easier when I see things in a bar or pie graph, as opposed to 2048byte blocks.)
Sorta like a blend of Ghost and Partition Magic, except more powerful and free. This came to mind after trying to use Norton Ghost to image out to a firewire hard drive, and trying to image with dd. Ghost "supports" firewire but includes no drivers for any devices, and dd would have worked, but I was trying to stick it on a FAT32 partition (didn't feel like making a 5GB ext2 partition just to have windows bugging me to let it destroy the thing.)
Anyone know of a project like this?
Do you know why you think RPMs are a bad idea,
/some/file/somewhere
or rather
do you know what makes debians apt-get better than RPM?
As a heavy RPM user I somehow have the opposite opinion and find the apt tools very lacking;
Lets swap knowledge and educate eachother:
rpm -qf
tells me which package an installed file belongs to, very useful.
What can apt-get do?
blog.sam.liddicott.com
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind - I'm sure. But does anybody know a list, that is complete as possible? I know only a list of CD-Live-distros at knoppix.net .
apt-file search /some/file/somewhere
Your turn!
So the trend would be towards using... Debian then, seeing as how Knoppix == Debian+extras.
I had the opportunity to meet Warren and participate in a 2 hour interactive demo of the then latest build of Mepis a couple months ago right here in Parkersburg, WV at a Mid Ohio Valley Linux Users Group meeting. I was VERY impressed both with the distro, and with Warren's EXCELLENT ability to continue adding "Oh yeah!" features that you wish you could find in most Linux distros (For example, the ability to use the CD as a portable graphical partition manager, internet terminal, etc) along the lines of Knoppix. At that time, the "next major feature" he was hammering out was the ability to store your home directory and such on thumbdrives (Does Knoppix do this now?).
Although Mepis looked pretty damned solid and useful, what grabbed me the most was Warren's willingness and outright enthusiasm regarding feedback. This guy is SERIOUS about trying to listen to EVERYBODY regarding the project in order to improve it and make it something that everybody wants to use. He not only is producing the distro to achieve personal goals, but he genuinely is in it for "the people", programmers and users alike.
If you've ever wanted to really make a difference in the development of a growing and powerful distro, this is a good one to check out.
What other distro teams or people have you all had exceptional interactive experiences with?
Having seen the screenshots available for this distro, I'm not terribly impressed with the user interfaces for the configuration screens. It's nice to have a GUI for a lot of those things, but the Mandrake control center and SuSE YaST seem to do it in a friendlier way.
That said, there's something nice about elegant simplicity, too. There don't appear to be that many bells and whistles, and each utility appears to do exactly what it describes, no more and no less. That's something I find attractive in a configuration tool.
From what I've seen, it's not enough to make me switch distros (I'm a Mandrake and SuSE fan, personally), but I think this sort of thing has real potential for the crowd that thinks of themselves as power users, who nevertheless want a simple method to do a lot of the otherwise time-consuming busy work.
I've been using Mepis for a while now, definitely more than a month. It has the strengths of Debian, and is an easy install. Sure, the name of the distro is silly, but a lot of distros have silly names. It is KDE-based, but it's a breeze to install GNOME with apt-get. More than anything, Mepis is useful as a way to get Debian on your system without going through the somewhat arduous Debian install.
Mandrake's developers have really done a great job with their rpm system. Urpmi can be used just like apt-get, but it works with rpm's instead. You can configure multiple sources and run it with their great looking gui (rpmdrake) or their command like app urpmi. So on my multimedia system I can install the basics then run (after configuring urpmi as described at plf.zarb.org and thacs): urpmi mythtv, then have a nice functioning PVR to record my episodes of The Shield on.
The apt/rpm arguments are pretty dated, dependancies used to be a real nightmare with rpm systems, but I've been using Mandrake for years without trouble. Not to gush, but its nice to have something that actually makes my life easier, I can see why you debian users love it so much.
Quack, quack.
How do you see the 500/hour raw submissions? I imagine it would be an interesting read every now and then.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
>ntfs support as in both read AND WRITE support?
Although I heed the warnings and don't use it on anything important, NTFS read/write support has not been a problem. I've been using it since 2.2.
It would be good to know what specific problems are anticipated and under what circumstances they should manifest. Is there a doc resource for this?
I'm guessing the problems will be more serious if you use windows, for instance, hibernating a windows session then writing its filesystem, stuff like that. I haven't really looked hard, but, I haven't seen a report of any actual problems experienced with NTFS r/w.
What I'd rather see is a good ReiserFS that can be used for the root filesystem on WindowsXP. Not holding my breath of course.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm gonna get flames for this, but oh well... I've tried out many distributions. Anyone who knows me will say that until about six months ago they'd catch me every third weekend or so repartitioning a hard drive to try out some new distro. I've used straight RPM, apt-rpm, urpmi, and various GUI frontends for these from Synaptic to Kpackage. I have no idea how many distro's I've used, but the best guess I can give is "more than ten." I finally settled on Gentoo and I run several boxes with it. The reason for that is none of those ditributions were quite what I wanted. Gentoo is not the way desktop Linux should go for everybody. Probably not even most geeks. But Gentoo doesn't call itself "Linux for Everybody," it's for people who like to do things their way and don't care about how long it takes. I learned more in a week of using Gentoo than in a month with Mandrake, and for that alone I like it. Windows XP isn't going to force anyone to learn the DOS-based CLI and a pretty KDE with every conceivably useful piece of software already configured, installed and running isn't going to teach anyone how to tinker with the nuts and bolts of Linux. Gentoo definitely has its zealots, just like the Mac (Although we're supposed to like the Mac zealots - oops, sorry) but the fact is it's got its place. Everyone should at least install Gentoo once. It's like a boot camp, making you learn things you might have never questioned before. And NO other distribution ever made me want to compile my own kernel, but after I did it once I find myself compiling new kernels just to see what certain things will do. Had I used an "everything-just-works" Redhat kernel I'd have never learned how to make weird hardware work, and I'd have never even known I can take out support for gear I don't have, modularize certain things, compile-in others, and generally tune it for my machines. I'm even using 2.6 kernels now and loving the performance increase. Until Gentoo, the idea of compiling my own kernel and screwing around with my bootloader was a pretty scary idea that I didn't see any benefit to. Yes. Most people don't want to do that. But most popular desktop distributions don't make that neccecssary. That's great, and that's the direction desktop Linux should go, but if we don't have a Gentoo then people like me who've only been at this for a year or two aren't going to learn the things that some of you old hands consider basic skills.
As for Gentoo vs. Debian and whatnot... Well, for every Gentoo zealot I've seen on here making blanket statements about how it's the best, I must have seen three or four slightly more subdued Debian zealots who simply assume everyone already knows that Debian's the One True Linux. (Similarly, I don't see Mac zealots getting flamed every time they open their mouths with one of the three or four pre-recorded phrases they've been taught how to say.) I like Debian. I really do. For a server I'd probably use Debian before Gentoo. For a desktop, I can't imagine using Debian and liking it as much as Gentoo. People say Gentoo is "bleeding-edge" like it's a bad thing, but I want to try new software and Debian really doesn't make that easy. I can change one variable in make.conf and it's not so "bleeding-edge" anymore, but even then I don't have to wait years before someone decides a package is "stable." Some may say that I can live on the edge with Debian too by using the more-uunstable-than-testing, guaranteed-to-smoke-your-box Sid, but even that's sometimes old and inconsistent. I installed Sarge (testing) recently and was kinda pleased to see a 2.5 kernel, (would have rather seen 2.6, as testing a 2.5 isn't helping anyone) but I was shocked to find Mozilla 1.0 in there. That's the difference to me. Even if Gentoo were binary-only I'd use it over Debian. I appreciate Debian's stability but for me it's got its price. In half a year of running four Gentoo machines, their only fuckups have been ones I've caused, so like every operating system there is, it's as stable as I let it be.