Experience with SM2004.6
I recount my experiences with Mepis 2004.6 in hopes??it may??encourage a few newcomers.?? I have very little experience with Linux, having tried Mandrake 8.1 a couple of years ago and gave up quickly.?? I have kept in touch with developments for the last few months and decided to try Mepis a couple of weeks ago.
The download?? from mrbass.org went smoothly, although it took about 2 hours using SBC Yahoo DSL.
Burning the ISO CD at 48X was not completed because of buffer overload.?? When I slowed down the write speed to 8X, the burn went very well and was actually faster than at 48X.
Running Mepis from the CD was easy.?? All hardware was detected: Canon i450 printer, Epson 1660 USB scanner, Olympus Digital camera, and LinkSys 10/100 USB DSL modem.?? The old Hayes LT Winmodem was??also detected.?? Running from the CD has some frustrations, such as??setting up the hardware each time.
Installing to hard disc.?? I installed??Mepis to a separate 6.8GB Maxtor hard drive and left Windows on it's own 30GB HD.
The install was simple and fast.?? Grub was installed on the windows disc in MBR. (See suggestions below)?? Once again, all hardware was detected.?? After setting up the printer (using BJC8200 driver), setting up the internet connection with Mozilla, and the Epson scanner, I was ready to work.?? Sound worked after tweaking the mixer.?? That is, it works on the Liteon CD-RW, but not on the Memorex 48X CDRom yet.?? I know the the CDROM works, since that was used in the download, etc, but so far, no sound.
Suggestions and comments:
When running from the CD, open the "Documents" folder and print the two documents.?? These??are helpful with the HD installation.?? These documents should be expanded to become a full "Readme" for Mepis.?? They are useful, although some things seem to be meant for earlier versions, not 2004.6.
The Mepis Quick Start gives instructions for using a floppy instead of Grub for multiboot, which I wanted to do.???? But I never found a way to choose that option while installing, nor to make?? the boot floppy after installing.?? No trouble installing or using Grub.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about mounting discs, or??when to, or not.?? When reading the Mepis forums, there was a lot advice about this which seemed to apply for earlier versions, but not for this one.?? For example, many mentioned an icon or file called "Removable Discs" which I have never found.?? Anyway, it seems that in the 2004.6 yoou don't have to worry about this; they work and mount when needed;??(so??far - ??)
I have not had problems moving Office 2000 files to Open Office.
Mepis works very well, and at least as fast as Windows on my box.?? It contains a lot of programs, maybe too many.?? I would prefer to have fewer programs for scanning, printing, and multimedia, with more complete instructions for one or two good ones.
For information: Win98SE,?? 750MB AMD Duron, 768MB Mem, Shuttle AK12MB, Via 8363-686 Circuit board, ATI Multimedia Video driver, Sound Blaster Pro or compatible, Via AC'97 Audio Controller.????????
