Dear Patrons of Linuxseekers,

Switch to MEPIS ! Is it non-geeks friendly ? Well, before you read this review, my provisional verdict for this distro is :- SimplyMEPIS may offer the best out-of-the-box experience. How true is this statement ? Is SimplyMEPIS 64 bitbeta 4 as cuddly as the pengiuns ? Here's the story.

SimplyMepis as we know is based on Ubuntu core since version 6.0. With Ubuntu in the picture, i think that SimplyMEPIS range of product can be rebranded to SimplyMEPIS DS. DS means double strength. The last version of SimplyMEPIS (6.0) was released about 6 months ago. MEPIS distribution is currently ranked at number 4 behind fedora at DistroWatch. The fact that there is a dedicated website called Mepislovers.com says it all. Passion evoking ! Thriving community!



SimplyMepis can be downloaded for free or it can be purchased at its store. Please buy a copy if you wish to support this Mepic phenomenon. Just imagine, you can even buy its source code at the store. That's a great display of the open source spirit.



I have tried SimplyMepis 6.0 before, but didn't install it. I didn't like the graphics. The 'aquarium' at the desktop panel was cool though. The reasons why i wanted to review this maiden release of the 64 bit version of SimplyMEPIS (SimplyMEPIS-CD_6.0-4-beta4_amd64) were :-

i) why MEPIS enjoyed such a high ranking on DistroWatch despite a not so great graphics.

ii) whether this 64 bit SimplyMEPIS would to work seamlessly with most of my desktop's hardware which had been communicating well with my existing 32 bit Linux desktop.



I am sure there a lot of people would want to know how well can a 64 bit Linux desktop assimilate into a society mainly driven by 32 bit Linux desktop. This has become even more important as a very significant number of people turning to the affordable 64 bit Athlon machine for desktop use.



Lately, i see a lot of Turion 64 notebook in the market eating up the pentium M's market share. In fact, my wife had one. I managed to test it with Knoppix 4. For your information, 64 bit computing started in the late 1980s. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the Linux community that will eventually spearhead further adoption and development of a 64 bit desktop OS.

For review of SimplyMEPIS-CD_6.0-4-beta4_amd64 , i used my desktop with specs shown below:-

-AMD Athlon64 3000+

-1Gb of ddr sdram.

- ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphic card.

- 80Gb sata1 hard disk.

-rt2500 based pci wifi card.

Warren Woodford announced the availability of 64 bit version of SimplyMepis 6.0-4 for the very first time on 29 dec 2006. It was beta 1. He commented that the look, the feel, and the functions of the 32 bit and the 64 bit version of SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 would be the same. The difference, he added, would be the availability of extra multimedia codecs for the 32 bit version of SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4.

Well, back to the review proper of SimplyMEPIS-CD_6.0-4-beta4_amd64. I began with booting upmy Athlon64 desktop with the downloaded livecd. At the boot screen i chose to boot with 'BOOT NORMAL' option. This option was described as being suitable for most new computers.

The subsequent startup bootsplash comprised of a captivating blue colour background with MEPIS logo of pyramids plus the sun at the lower sector. In my opinion, the blue bootsplash screen has improved quite a lot since SimplyMEPIS 6.0. When the graphical login screen appeared i logged in as demo user. The password for demo user was demo. The default root user password was root. It took 40 seconds to fully load the KDE3.5.3. I think it would be nice if the developers could print the password for demo user and root user clearly on the login screen , so that it's easier for newbies and potential windows converts.

When the desktop was ready, I was greeted by the usual healthy welcoming sound of KDE desktop. Obviously the AC97' sound card was okay with SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 Bit beta 4 . The resolution of my 17-inch samsung LCD monitor was perfectly detected and autoconfigured. I couldn't find the Kaquarium. Gone for good ? I thought that was the 'mascot' of MEPIS. The wallpaper of SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 was graphically better than the one in SimplyMEPIS 6.0. It was decorated by many fine white lines resembling many inverted quadratic functions graphs. The part that captured my attention was the 64 exponent located beside the SimplyMEPIS word. In plain words :- SimplyMEPIS to the power of 64!

I was delighted when i saw an applet showing 2 red coloured communication towers on the right side of the desktop panel informing me about the successful wifi connection to my Linksys adsl router WAG 354G. To satisfy my id , i launched Firefox. It lagged many seconds. Then i ran Konqueror, it was brisk. My 27-month-old daughter could play Teletubbies via Firefox. It's a flash based game hosted by the BBC. With Firefox, I could watch some online music video via the embedded Realplayer. I could also watch quicktime based Spiderman 3 movie trailer. Enough of fiddling with the SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 bit livecd desktop, it's time to decide whether to install SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 bit beta 4 into my Athlon64's 80Gb hard-disk or install into my high speed 2Gb usb key. I chose to install to the 80Gb sata1 hard disk by clicking on the MEPIS INSTALL icon located at the left margin of the desktop.



As a result, the graphical installer popped up and all i had to do was selecting the autopartitioning option. Choose custom partitioning if there is pre-existing windows os or just run the accompanying QTParted tool if you need a different partitioning schemes. It took less than 5 minutes to format the root partition and also the swap partition and also copying all the necessary file to my sata harddisk.

After the installer copied all the needed files, i was requested to install the Grub bootloader. Then, i was requested to enable common services e.g guarddog, ppp, bluez, cupsys. Lastly , i had to type in the computer name and domain name, followed by configuration of the time, locale, keyboard, default user account, and root account. Next, rebooot. Voila!



Once I got into the freshly installed SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 bit beta 4, I went on to configure SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 to use my HP all-in-one printer (officejet 4355). To configure the printer i had to go to SYSTEM icon(beside K-menu) -> PERIPHERALS option -> PRINTERS option. My Officejet 4355 started printing wonderfully. Unfortunately, the hplip driver that came with SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 bit beta 4 didn't support the scanning component. However, all is not lost, as my latest generic HP inkjet driver can be download from this website. The information over that site showed that i needed a minimum of HPLIP version 0.9.11 for Officejet 4355. However, SimplyMepis-6.0-4 64 bit beta4 has bundled HPLIP version 0.9.7. Whether this latest generic driver will make my HP's scanning component work, will remain a mystery. Anyway i hope that there's some 64 Bit driver somewhere on the net. Well, i could also wait for mepis/ubuntu to upgrade the hplip.




The new tools found in SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 Bit (beta4) that i must mention were 'Mepis Network Assistant', 'Mepis System Assistant', 'Mepis User Assistant', and 'Mepis X-windows ssistant'. These tools can be found at the SYSTEM MENU (which is located near the K-Menu). With the help of these new 'assistants' the users would have a simpler way to configure the system. The day has also come for SimplyMEPIS to unleash its magic by installing itself into a usb key. Be it 32 Bit or 64 Bit. The great tool is the 'Mepis System Assistant'.

Another gift from SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 bit (beta 4) is Mepis X-windows assistant. This is for non-geeks and me ! It will install the graphic card driver for you! Name it, nvidia ? ATI ? Just make sure that your MEPIS machine is already connected to the internet. This process will not work if you're executing from the livecd. Just switch to MEPIS !

Internet option of the K-MENU. If you need the latest 32 bit opera 9.10 browser, you can get it from the mepis official repository. The Opera official website only provides the binary for SimplyMEPIS 6.0 (32bit). The official repositories brings with it 18,798 packages at the time i was writing this review. You would have 19,282 packages if you were using SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 32 bit (beta4).

Deja vu !




On the multimedia side, i could watch original dvd movie, avi video, and also play mp3 songs with kmplayer. To serve the community better, xvidcap package has been added to the repository to enable user to make video-based demonstration of certain software application online. This is a very useful application. Of course, a digital camera or even a camcorder can be used to record the software demo, but the quality will be very low. In order to watch MPEG video, i needed to grabbed the codecs from the official repository. One of the many things i like about the debian based distribution is the availability of camstream apps which detected my Genius brand and also A4tech brand of webcam out-of-the-box. SimplyMEPIS 6.0-4 64 bit also comes with Amarok application to assist you in managing your ipod and itunes.

MY WISH-LIST:

- win32codecs to be included into the repositories serving 64 Bit SimplyMEPIS as this codec was already included into the repositories for the 32 Bit version.

- kweather to cover more towns, may be mepis lovers will contribute.

- real life streaming aquarium owned by MEPIS as the desktop panel applet replacing the Kaquarium.

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