Yesterday, the MEPIS developers released SimplyMEPIS 11.0, a year after the release of SimplyMEPIS 8.5, which I have reviewed before. (I went back and read that review and had a pretty good laugh at how short and shallow it was. Please feel free to do the same. That said, if you feel like doing the same at this review, please explain why in the comments.) In that review, I liked that it included many codecs and useful programs out-of-the-box along with the MEPIS tools, which were basically the Linux Mint tools before Linux Mint existed. I didn't like that Synaptic Package Manager refused to work.
For those who don't know, MEPIS was one of the original user-friendly Linux distributions (notwithstanding Slackware, which was user-friendly for its time), alongside Mandrake (now Mandriva); furthermore, it was the original user-friendly Debian-based distribution, as it came into existence two years prior to Ubuntu. On that note, interestingly, in a sign that Ubuntu really has stolen the spotlight, many articles announcing the release of SimplyMEPIS 11.0 accidentally called it "SimplyMEPIS 11.04", referring to the recent release of Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal". Furthermore, like Mandriva, it started with KDE, though while Mandriva has since then grown a GNOME variant as well, MEPIS has stuck exclusively with KDE; that said, there is a variant of MEPIS called AntiX which uses the lightweight Fluxbox and IceWM instead of KDE.
Though I didn't write that in the old review, I tested SimplyMEPIS 8.5 a year ago using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Although the MEPIS wiki says that using the "dd" command is faster and easier, it seems to imply that SimplyMEPIS 11.0 can still be written to a USB correctly with UnetBootin, so I did just that. I thought about testing the installation procedure, but I ended up not doing so for reasons that will become more clear if you follow the jump.
After changing the BIOS to boot from USB, I went past the boot menu and found a wall of scrolling text appear for about 10 seconds. That gave way to a blinking '-' symbol on the top-left corner of the screen. I didn't expect this to last long, but I waited 5 minutes, and nothing happened. I then pressed ALT+F1 and was put into a terminal session and was asked to log in. As I didn't remember the live session username and password, I tried all sorts of combinations, only to fail each time. Desperate, I logged in as root, and this worked (username "root", password "root", I believe, though don't quote me on this). I read the error messages preceding and found that the Plymouth boot splash failed to display. I was surprised to see that MEPIS even had a Plymouth boot splash because that typically is only found in Ubuntu and its derivatives, though slowly it is making its way into direct derivatives of Debian as well. I was further surprised as to why Plymouth didn't load, but I figured this might just be an issue with Plymouth, so I typed "startkde". That didn't work, so I tried "startx". That didn't work, so I thought it might be an issue with me having used UnetBootin instead of "dd" to create the live USB.
At this point, I restarted the computer, formatted that partition of the USB, and made a live USB using MultiSystem. I went through all the previous steps again and encountered all the same errors, so clearly it wasn't an issue with the method I was using to make the live USB, because in any case, at least it could fully boot. When "startx" failed to work, I looked more closely at the error messages and found that MEPIS wasn't recognizing my laptop monitor at all. For some reason, the Links CLI web browser wasn't included out-of-the-box, and "aptitude install links" didn't work, so I restarted and looked up on the MEPIS wiki how to force MEPIS to use the generic VESA driver in GRUB, thinking this might solve the problem. It didn't. After this, I did some more forum searching to no avail, and I even got on the #mepis IRC channel, only to find myself the only participant on that IRC channel.
At this point, I could have dug deeper to learn more about my issue, but I chose not to. Furthermore, I could have just tested MEPIS with VirtualBox, but I really wanted to see if it would play well with my computer's hardware, and it clearly didn't, so at this point there was no compelling reason for me to further test it in VirtualBox. Sure, I could have seen how much memory it consumes, or what the desktop is like, or whatever else, but there's no point if I know I can't install it on my computer.
I've gotten comments on past reviews about how I should use live DVDs for consistency and how I should really install it on real computer hardware, but I can neither afford to waste the few DVDs I have for distributions I will likely never touch again nor risk having all my data on my computer deleted lest something go horribly wrong in the installation process. (For the record, the latter has happened to me once, and that was one too many.) So the next best thing for me to do is to test the live session on a live USB so that I can see how well it plays with my computer's hardware without needing to commit to installing it on said hardware. And please, this isn't Slackware, where I have to do the installation and then the grueling configuration without being able to first try it as a live session; MEPIS is supposed to be user-friendly, and that means it should include a workable live session. If I wanted to, I could also test the installation in VirtualBox, but really, the installation is typically done only once, so if it works, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that important; what's more important is the desktop which the user will see every day.
I also got a lot of comments in my review of Slackware 13.1 correctly criticizing me for not taking the time to go through the forums, helpful Slackware configuration websites, and other places to configure the installed system to work properly. If I were redoing that review and I came upon this problem (forget for a moment that this is a live session given that Slackware doesn't come with its own live media), I would have certainly taken the time to figure out exactly what was wrong with X/11 and fixed it. But I didn't do that here. Why? Because it's MEPIS, not Slackware! MEPIS is supposed to be the grandfather of user-friendly Debian-based distributions; I think I should be able to expect user-friendliness here too. Furthermore, MEPIS courts new users; its website is professional if bland, its forums are helpful and welcoming, and its tools are specifically made for new users. If I were a new user, I would have probably given up even before this point.
And finally, I've also seen comments on reviews of software that didn't work complaining that I didn't talk about the nuts-and-bolts of the software or show pictures or stuff like that. If I review a piece of software that works, I post pictures of my time with that software to prove that I really did use it. If I don't post pictures, that means the software didn't work for whatever reason. It's as simple as that. So from now on, if I review software that doesn't work and you want to see pictures or read release notes, go to the software's website, because I'm not going to post pictures here. If you want to know whether the software might work for a newbie or whether it might work on your computer's hardware, then do come here; having used Linux for two years, I'm not a novice anymore per se, but because I've stuck with the newbie-friendly Linux Mint through those two years, I'm still only epsilon above novice level, so when I do reviews, it's still from the perspective of the newbie, not from the perspective of the experienced pro.
In short, I won't discourage anyone except for first-time Linux users from trying out SimplyMEPIS, but I will say that my time with SimplyMEPIS 11.0 was far worse than my time with SimplyMEPIS 8.5; considering that Debian 6 "Squeeze", #! 10 "Statler", and Debian Testing-based Linux Mint have all worked perfectly on a live USB, SimplyMEPIS 11.0 has been a pretty big disappointment. Hopefully these issues get fixed within a few minor revisions, at which point I might be willing to give SimplyMEPIS 11 another chance.
You can get SimplyMEPIS from here, and look at pretty pictures of SimplyMEPIS 11.0 here.
For those who don't know, MEPIS was one of the original user-friendly Linux distributions (notwithstanding Slackware, which was user-friendly for its time), alongside Mandrake (now Mandriva); furthermore, it was the original user-friendly Debian-based distribution, as it came into existence two years prior to Ubuntu. On that note, interestingly, in a sign that Ubuntu really has stolen the spotlight, many articles announcing the release of SimplyMEPIS 11.0 accidentally called it "SimplyMEPIS 11.04", referring to the recent release of Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal". Furthermore, like Mandriva, it started with KDE, though while Mandriva has since then grown a GNOME variant as well, MEPIS has stuck exclusively with KDE; that said, there is a variant of MEPIS called AntiX which uses the lightweight Fluxbox and IceWM instead of KDE.
Though I didn't write that in the old review, I tested SimplyMEPIS 8.5 a year ago using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Although the MEPIS wiki says that using the "dd" command is faster and easier, it seems to imply that SimplyMEPIS 11.0 can still be written to a USB correctly with UnetBootin, so I did just that. I thought about testing the installation procedure, but I ended up not doing so for reasons that will become more clear if you follow the jump.
After changing the BIOS to boot from USB, I went past the boot menu and found a wall of scrolling text appear for about 10 seconds. That gave way to a blinking '-' symbol on the top-left corner of the screen. I didn't expect this to last long, but I waited 5 minutes, and nothing happened. I then pressed ALT+F1 and was put into a terminal session and was asked to log in. As I didn't remember the live session username and password, I tried all sorts of combinations, only to fail each time. Desperate, I logged in as root, and this worked (username "root", password "root", I believe, though don't quote me on this). I read the error messages preceding and found that the Plymouth boot splash failed to display. I was surprised to see that MEPIS even had a Plymouth boot splash because that typically is only found in Ubuntu and its derivatives, though slowly it is making its way into direct derivatives of Debian as well. I was further surprised as to why Plymouth didn't load, but I figured this might just be an issue with Plymouth, so I typed "startkde". That didn't work, so I tried "startx". That didn't work, so I thought it might be an issue with me having used UnetBootin instead of "dd" to create the live USB.
At this point, I restarted the computer, formatted that partition of the USB, and made a live USB using MultiSystem. I went through all the previous steps again and encountered all the same errors, so clearly it wasn't an issue with the method I was using to make the live USB, because in any case, at least it could fully boot. When "startx" failed to work, I looked more closely at the error messages and found that MEPIS wasn't recognizing my laptop monitor at all. For some reason, the Links CLI web browser wasn't included out-of-the-box, and "aptitude install links" didn't work, so I restarted and looked up on the MEPIS wiki how to force MEPIS to use the generic VESA driver in GRUB, thinking this might solve the problem. It didn't. After this, I did some more forum searching to no avail, and I even got on the #mepis IRC channel, only to find myself the only participant on that IRC channel.
At this point, I could have dug deeper to learn more about my issue, but I chose not to. Furthermore, I could have just tested MEPIS with VirtualBox, but I really wanted to see if it would play well with my computer's hardware, and it clearly didn't, so at this point there was no compelling reason for me to further test it in VirtualBox. Sure, I could have seen how much memory it consumes, or what the desktop is like, or whatever else, but there's no point if I know I can't install it on my computer.
I've gotten comments on past reviews about how I should use live DVDs for consistency and how I should really install it on real computer hardware, but I can neither afford to waste the few DVDs I have for distributions I will likely never touch again nor risk having all my data on my computer deleted lest something go horribly wrong in the installation process. (For the record, the latter has happened to me once, and that was one too many.) So the next best thing for me to do is to test the live session on a live USB so that I can see how well it plays with my computer's hardware without needing to commit to installing it on said hardware. And please, this isn't Slackware, where I have to do the installation and then the grueling configuration without being able to first try it as a live session; MEPIS is supposed to be user-friendly, and that means it should include a workable live session. If I wanted to, I could also test the installation in VirtualBox, but really, the installation is typically done only once, so if it works, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that important; what's more important is the desktop which the user will see every day.
I also got a lot of comments in my review of Slackware 13.1 correctly criticizing me for not taking the time to go through the forums, helpful Slackware configuration websites, and other places to configure the installed system to work properly. If I were redoing that review and I came upon this problem (forget for a moment that this is a live session given that Slackware doesn't come with its own live media), I would have certainly taken the time to figure out exactly what was wrong with X/11 and fixed it. But I didn't do that here. Why? Because it's MEPIS, not Slackware! MEPIS is supposed to be the grandfather of user-friendly Debian-based distributions; I think I should be able to expect user-friendliness here too. Furthermore, MEPIS courts new users; its website is professional if bland, its forums are helpful and welcoming, and its tools are specifically made for new users. If I were a new user, I would have probably given up even before this point.
And finally, I've also seen comments on reviews of software that didn't work complaining that I didn't talk about the nuts-and-bolts of the software or show pictures or stuff like that. If I review a piece of software that works, I post pictures of my time with that software to prove that I really did use it. If I don't post pictures, that means the software didn't work for whatever reason. It's as simple as that. So from now on, if I review software that doesn't work and you want to see pictures or read release notes, go to the software's website, because I'm not going to post pictures here. If you want to know whether the software might work for a newbie or whether it might work on your computer's hardware, then do come here; having used Linux for two years, I'm not a novice anymore per se, but because I've stuck with the newbie-friendly Linux Mint through those two years, I'm still only epsilon above novice level, so when I do reviews, it's still from the perspective of the newbie, not from the perspective of the experienced pro.
In short, I won't discourage anyone except for first-time Linux users from trying out SimplyMEPIS, but I will say that my time with SimplyMEPIS 11.0 was far worse than my time with SimplyMEPIS 8.5; considering that Debian 6 "Squeeze", #! 10 "Statler", and Debian Testing-based Linux Mint have all worked perfectly on a live USB, SimplyMEPIS 11.0 has been a pretty big disappointment. Hopefully these issues get fixed within a few minor revisions, at which point I might be willing to give SimplyMEPIS 11 another chance.
You can get SimplyMEPIS from here, and look at pretty pictures of SimplyMEPIS 11.0 here.
