SimplyMEPIS 6.0-beta5 Release: MEPIS on the Outside, Dapper LTS on the Inside
Morgantown, WV, June 6, 2006 -- MEPIS has released beta 5, the final beta, of SimplyMEPIS 6.0. The ISO image is available for download and test in the mepis 'testing' subdirectory at public mirrors and the MEPIS Subscriber's Site. For up to 7 days, please send feedback to
Beta 5 incorporates packages from the final release of Ubuntu Dapper LTS. Warren Woodford of MEPIS said "I congratulate our friends at Ubuntu and Canonical on the release of Dapper. In my opinion, it's the most stable and polished open source distro available anywhere." Warren continued "Like Dapper LTS, SimplyMEPIS will also be supported for 3 years on the desktop. This is made possible by the hard work and commitment of Ubuntu and Canonical."
Beta 5 includes a few changes in applications and components. Lame, 915resolution, and vmware kernel support were added to the bootable/installable CD. Acpi-support and klaptop have been replaced by kpowersave. This has resulted in reports of better out of the box suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk functionality for laptops.
Kde-systemsettings was replaced with "MEPIS System Settings" which is a custom configuration of the standard "settings" kio-slave. The User Tweaks and System Tweaks components of the MEPIS OS Center have been moved to separate QT apps. Warren explained "We were seeking a kcontrol framework configuration that would allow us to breakout the MEPIS configuration components and permit the integration of configuration utilities that were not KDE apps and specifically not Kcontrol components. This way, MEPIS and the MEPIS community can build configuration apps that have the potential of being written in a variety of languages and of being shared with the Ubuntu community. In other words, the apps can be written in C++ or Java or Ruby, etc. They can use QT, KDE, GTK, or WX widgets. For MEPIS, it doesn't matter as long as everyone conforms to the same design guidelines."
A SimplyMEPIS 6.0 Release Candidate is scheduled to follow in about one more week. Final release is planned for around June 20.
About MEPIS
MEPIS LLC was founded in 2003 by computer industry veteran Warren Woodford, to realize his personal vision for a computer environment that was complete and secure, while also being easy to try, easy to install, and easy to use. Today MEPIS offers commercial Linux solutions for home users, businesses, hardware vendors, and vertical market early adopters. MEPIS products are also available free of charge to not-for-profits, K-12 schools, and private users not requiring support.
About Ubuntu/Canonical
Ubuntu is a free software GNU/Linux distribution that aims to provide a high quality desktop featuring the best of the free software application universe. The project is primarily funded by Canonical, Ltd, which also runs Launchpad.net, a free software web collaboration site. Canonical, Ltd is headquartered in Douglas on the Isle of Man.
