MEPIS has undergone a lot of changes between the release of 3.4-3 and 6.0. The biggest change is that now approximately 75% of the packages in SimplyMEPIS are Ubuntu-maintained. Most of the other 25% of packages are Debian-maintained. The remaining packages MEPIS uses are MEPIS maintained, which gives you "The Magic of MEPIS"TM. Most users will not notice the changes because the unique details that make MEPIS what it is are still there. We still use our own custom installer, and things are tweaked as they have always been, so that, on most machines, MEPIS "just works." Now it just works a little better, and runs a little smoother.
On the software side, Simply 6.0 uses KDE 3.5.3 for its desktop environment. Updated versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice are all included. The MEPIS Desktop OnTheGo feature is still included, but the OnTheGo icon has been removed from the login screen.
The Ubuntu pools and community are a good match with MEPIS. Ubuntu's pools are stable, and they have a high engineering standard. The Dapper Drake pool is going to be maintained for up to 5 years, and MEPIS plans to support SimplyMEPIS 6.0 for 3 years. Because of the collaboration with Ubuntu, MEPIS is able to focus on improvements users will see instead of working under the hood.