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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?
I don't see why anyone would have anything against another Linux distro. That is what the Linux community is based on isn't it? Choice?
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
It's always good to see another distribution from a research/development standpoint. Rolling your own distro builds more who are familiar with the landscape.
/. worthy? I think it'd be better suited on distrowatch. Posting each new distribution won't help Linux, but rather it gives the impression of being a little desperate.
But why is this here? What defining feature of Mepis make it
I'm not trolling or trying to start a flamewar (I'm a Debian user myself), but Linux needs to push the envelope for creative code hacking.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
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 .
The trend seems to be towards two standard meta-distros:
- Debian for installations
- Knoppix for live-cds
Ceci n'est pas une signature
nerds care? slashdot is news for nerds you know. and while you might not want to(or be able to) use that linux based piano you can very well download this and use it.
if you don't care about these things please go and make msn your homepage. or make linux things not show up your slashdot(from prefs).
i care as well, i guess i'm a nerd. the reason why i read slashdot is because things like this do get mentioned and i can remember what they are when somebody speaks of them or asks if such a thing exists. now i know that there's yet another debian based distro out there that i should check out and maybe recommend when somebody asks what they should install on their system when they want to check out this 'linux' thing.
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Click Here for the reason this distribution is called MEPIS.
I just gotta say, that's the most obscure, and possibly one of the dumbest distro names ever. Okay, Yggdrasil was slightly more obscure, but in a cool way.
Regards, WPostma/Franciscan
apt is a dependancy resolution tool for dpkg. dpkg has all the abilities of RPM and more.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
true. but it takes days to install and my mother would never be able to set her own USE flags. i think mepis is looking to provide maximum customization while still being "end user friendly"
2 1337 4 u!
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?
Now I know that there are plenty of tools out there that use rpms and give you similar functionality to programs like apt-get or dselect, but I think people just like the fact that in Debian they install these things by default and are built specifically with them in mind.
Anyways though, for a new distro that's just come out, it seems like it wouldn't really matter whether it's Debian Based or Red Hat based. You can get the same functionality with either package format, it just depends on what tools you include with your distro.
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.
The idea that the chosen defaults for RH, Mandrake, etc. take away control is absurd. You can still logon to root and hack them into a debian box, or even Gentoo. You just have to know how. You can build all your packages from source with "l33t" compiling options (however much they actually erode performance), as well as install within a chroot environment, as per LFS.
Really, Gentoo users often perceive that Gentoo is giving them control, when actually Gentoo is just making easier the same advanced tasks that you can do on any other distribution.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Lets swap knowledge and educate eachother:
/some/file/somewhere
/some/file/somewhere
rpm -qf
tells me which package an installed file belongs to, very useful.
dpkg -S
Very basic simple functionality.
Use the experimental x86 livecds with GNOME, KDE, and fluxbox, and you can have a complete desktop while installing Gentoo. On modern machines the process only takes about a day or two to get into your own system if you don't want to just stay on the livecd until you have your favorite desktop installed (KDE will take quite some time longer). Besides, USE flags are not the only thing that enables customization in Gentoo. Pick and choosing what you install is real nice, even if it's not as fine-tuned as making use of the, well, USE flags. :)
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Oh by the way you can get the livecds here. I recommend the one named livecd-2.4.21-kde-gnome-distcc-07-15-2003.iso.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Gentoo gives you total control, like no other linux distro.
true. but it takes days to install and my mother would never be able to set her own USE flags. i think mepis is looking to provide maximum customization while still being "end user friendly"
I wasnt speaking for people like your mother, I was speaking for the linux hacker who likes to tweak and hack. The person who tries more than one distro, or even has a ppc/sparc box. The ones who like to bang the metal, code demos, have a little bit of the artist hacker in them.
Gentoo isnt the distro for your mother. Gentoo is like the turbo charger you bolt on, or the even the custom paint job for your car. Its the way you want, exactly. And that customization takes knowledge and experience with building a src based linux setup. Yes it takes time to compile, just as building a plane in your garage takes time.
I wouldnt ever recommend Gentoo (except live cd's). Knoppix/SuSE or Mandrake are much better choices. SuSE has better end-user tools, Knoppix provides the best visual (out of the box) experience. Mandrake is popular and easy to find support. Just as there are different cars, there are different linux distros. Pick the one for the right job.
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.
No, you're not wrong. Redhat is primarily a gnome distro. In order to make bluecurve work, they've modified both kde and gnome to look very similar, in effect creating a 'middle ground' that is uniquely redhat, i.e. bluecurve.
It has to be said, they broke a lot more kde than they did gnome, but then, they have a lot more experience with it than kde.
If you want a commercial kde based distro, go with SuSE. They are very much backers of kde, and will do it right. Gnome on suse though is *shudder*
Mandrake, is fairly agnostic, in that it provides a pretty much unmodified gnome and kde, with the mandrake extra config tools on top, and a galaxy theme that is pretty similar on both.
Gentoo provides kde and gnome 'as is' without giving you any gui tools at all on top.
Fraid I don't use any other distros, so can't comment on their policies.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
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.
What can apt-get do?
./configure) requires editing a template control file, providing a list of configuration files, and editing the template rules file (which is just a makefile), unlike redhat, where you have to create a .spec file listing all of your patches and all of the steps for compilation, with variables and other syntax specific to rpm.
apt-get install foo: locate foo, download foo and its dependencies, install foo and its dependencies, uninstalls conflicting packages (yes, it tells you what its going to do before it does anything)
apt-get dist-upgrade: upgrade your debian distribution.
apt-cache search foo: regular expression search for "foo" in package name and description.
In truth, apt and rpm do not compete. Apt is a mechanism for retrieving updates in an orderly fashion, and rpm is a package manager. This is why you can get versions of apt for redhat/mandrake/etc. that use RPMs. Apt really competes with redhat's up2date software (assuming you subscribed to it).
dpkg is debian's competitor to RPM. There are a lot of things that dpkg handles better than RPM, but there are a lot of things that RPM handles better than dpkg. For instance, I'm not sure dpkg handles relocatable packages like rpm can. However, building a package for debian (as long as your program "plays nice" and uses
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It hardly seems fair to say it has NTFS support when what it really means is it can use NTFS read-only. Like Gentoo, Knoppix, Mandrake, and God only knows how many other distros.
>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.
Hey guys,
:( and will put up one myself if I have to. When will these distros learn from Slackware (The Great!)? :)
We really need to get it together and distribute these ISOs on BitTorrent. I checked and no one had one available. I am downloading it now over a 56k link
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
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.
Of those, Partimagelooks the most promising to me, though I still haven't had the chance to try it.
:-)
I have been using partimage for over a year now. I use it at the primary school of my daughter where I do most of the computer stuff as volunteer. I burned a rescue cd from timo's rescue cd with a few minor changes (root password and simple script to connect to network).
Once on the network there I made some simple scripts that can partition the disk, restore a MBR, and then restore a image for each partition using partimage. The scripts can use simple partition and image information from a specified directory. Works like a charm, especially the possibility to script it in total and restore individual partitions. We had a guy on internship who went "Linux, that sound scary", but when he restored his first image he said "is it that simple?".
As for NTFS support of partimage, I use it all the time without any problems.
One of the partitions, that is restored by partimage contains a small debian install. It is hidden by LILO which immediatly boots windows 2000, and not really used at the moment. I plan to use it in future to make a simple image restore possible even for teachers. Always nice to know there is some real Linux power hidden on these 80 desktops.
Actually, apt/dpkg still has a number of advantages over apt/RPM or yum/RPM.
1) APT uses a text database, unlike RPM which uses a binary database. This makes fixing errors much easier, and also makes it harder to corrupt the database. For example, recently, one of the xfce libraries refused to uninstall in Debian sid. I was able to just go to the apt directory, and modify the appropriate removeal script so the package uninstalled cleanly. Doing this in RedHat would be much harder. Also, I've had my RPM database corrupted once or twice (--rebuild fixed it both times, though), while I've never had a Debian database corruption.
2) Its closely tied to the configuration system Debconf. That means that packages that require extra configuration (XFree, font packages, etc) have one integrated configuration system.
3)Dpkg allows the packager to specify recommended packages.
4) There are a lot of nice developer tools for Dpkg that let you write policy-compliant packages more easily.
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