MEPIS Linux on the Rise

The success of MEPIS has been given further credibility by two recent events. The first one was a comprehensive review at DesktopLinux.com, linked by many Linux news sites, where Michael C. Barnes, the long skeptical technology writer, declared the distribution to be "the best free desktop Linux". The second event was the launch last week of Point & Click Linux!, a new book for Linux beginners written by none other than Robin "Roblimo" Miller of NewsForge fame. The book revolves around SimplyMEPIS 2004, which accompanies the book on a CD. The publishers are clearly appealing to non-technical computer users many of whom are probably dissatisfied with Windows, but reluctant to learn something new: "Robin's book will show you the benefits of switching to Linux immediately," goes the sales pitch. "Your computer will run faster and more reliably than you ever believed possible. Surfing the net will no longer be an exercise in paranoia. And you'll discover a whole new world of powerful, free software that can run rings around the programs available for Windows."

MEPIS Linux comes in two editions - SimplyMEPIS and ProMEPIS. SimplyMEPIS is a single-CD desktop-oriented distribution designed for novice users. The latest version is 2004.4, which is available for free download from the distribution's mirrors. ProMEPIS is everything that can be found in SimplyMEPIS, plus development tools and server applications. The first release of ProMEPIS has just entered a non-public beta testing period, although the developers have promised to provide public betas starting with the next release.

Installing SimplyMEPIS is a very pleasant affair. The installation CD boots into a full graphical desktop, effectively acting as a live CD. However, this functionality is just an added bonus, because MEPIS Linux is a full Linux distribution designed to be installed on a hard disk. This is where MEPIS differs from traditional live CDs, such as Knoppix, which was designed as a portable OS on a CD, with a hard disk installation script added as an after-thought. MEPIS, on the other hand, wants to occupy a partition on a hard disk to really shine, although it is still good to know that it is just as capable of converting any PC with a CD-ROM drive into an instant Linux workstation. The installation is performed from within a "MEPIS Installation Center", a graphical installer with partition selection (and resizing with QTParted), file system formatting (with ext3 or ReiserFS), GRUB configuration, and user setup. Everything else is autoconfigured by the installation script.

On reboot, the user is presented with a graphical GRUB menu that provides a choice between 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, as well as Windows (if present on the hard disk) and Memtest. The kernel choice has been retained since the beta testing phase when some users reported hardware problems while booting the 2.6 kernel, although all was fine when their hardware was handled by the 2.4 kernel. By default, the system boots into the KDM login manager with KDE as the only desktop choice. The default KDE look has been somewhat customized to include more popular icons on the taskbar, as well as a "quick launcher" linking to some power user tools, such as Konsole, System Guard, KDE Control Center and MEPIS utilities. There is also an icon for Smb4K - an SMB share browser for KDE. Otherwise the default KDE desktop is somewhat unimaginative, which is probably why a MEPIS Beautification Project was launched by the MEPISLovers.com user community.

MEPIS includes a number of custom-built graphical applications to ease system management and perform certain administrative and user-level tasks. We have already mentioned the "MEPIS Installation Center", but there is also a "MEPIS System Center" and "MEPIS User Utilities". These are simple graphical tools that give users options to configure certain devices, such as mouse, monitor, network interfaces (including wireless network cards), set up apt sources, and rename their computers. While seasoned Linux users are unlikely to give them more than a curious glance, for novice users utilities like these can make a difference between a successful adoption of a Linux operating system and a return to Windows after a brief and frustrating spell with a Linux distribution. To further ease the conversion process, MEPIS also includes two low-level utilities called "meauto" and "mefstab", which handle removable USB/Firewire devices and dynamically auto-update the fstab file and create relevant desktop icons.

Package management can be performed either on the command line with apt-get, or through one of the graphical utilities, such as KPackage or Synaptic. The developers of MEPIS insist that there should never be a need to re-install the operating system, as upgrades (both on-line and from a local media) are fully supported. MEPIS maintains its own online repository of tried and tested DEBs, while packages from the vast Debian repository are also available for installation (some caution might be in order, though). Out of the box, MEPIS includes a working Java Runtime Environment, Flash Player, RealPlayer 10, as well as MPlayer plugin with QuickTime support. All of them are available to both Mozilla (the default browser) and Konqueror, but rumor has it that, by popular demand, Firefox will replace Mozilla as the default browser in the upcoming ProMEPIS release.

Although MEPIS Linux is not perfect (there are reports that the latest SimplyMEPIS fails to boot on certain low-end motherboards), its developers deserve praise for creating a solid product to help less technical users to get up to speed with Linux. Combined with the above-mentioned book, SimplyMEPIS provides an excellent introduction to the world of Libre Software. Perhaps a gift idea for this Christmas?