A praise to MEPIS

I justed wanted to share a story...

I have been using MEPIS since early 2004, mostly for special projects and some server stuff. During this time I would have a stack of CD's with different versions of Linux. I always looking for the "best" desktop that I could finally replace XP with. I was never satisfied and even when one would come close I would still be left going back to MEPIS because, in my opinion, it does things better.

So, around the 6.0 final stage and the 6.5 beta stage my only home computer at the time was a laptop. It was getting on in XP years (kind of like dog years) and needed that "time to backup and reinstall the OS because it's full of crap that I didn't want" stage in life. So I downloaded 6.5 beta (the first beta) loaded it up and WOW things had changed from 6.0 to 6.5. Things that I liked. So I headed out to the internet and got me a new hard drive for the laptop and a USB enclosure for the one in the laptop and a few days later we had MEPIS 6.5 as the new desktop OS. I didn't tell the family (Wife, two teenagers and a young one) and I didn't have it dual booted (I tried that once but opposition was so strong from the family that I relented and the MEPS option never got booted) so didn't want them to have that option.

The fist week was the toughest. Just them getting used to the new feel. My oldest daughter wanted Windows back with a passion. She uses it the most for keeping in touch with friends and doing school work. She was the toughest critic also, I heard things like "it does work as good", "nothing is the same", "Linux sucks" (that was the toughest one to hear" etc... I would tell her that the things she was feeling were due to being force fed an OS and the MS was "the devil".

To make this story not go too long I will get to the point.

The other day I had my work laptop home (I have it dual booted so I can use MEPIS without have to load "unauthorized" software in XP) and had it booted up to XP so I could get some work done. At the time the other computer was tied up and she needed to get online to do something and asked if she could use my work computer. I said sure and she said "but it's booted to XP" and I said "well arn't you happy that you get to use XP?" and she said (to my delight) "XP sucks, can you boot it to MEPIS?". We tend to be a sarcastic family so I look at her and said "are you serious?" and she said "yes, I would really rather have MEPIS". She still sarcastic, she said she's joining the LUG at college next year (no way that cheerleader's joining a LUG... but I'm not giving up hope).

Sweet!

Just thought I would share that story.

Later