Alpha Release: SimplyMEPIS 6.9.51Prebeta

Excerpts from the release announcement.

SimplyMEPIS 6.9.51prebeta is a preview of upcoming SimplyMEPIS 7. It is available from the MEPIS subscriber site and the MEPIS public mirrors.

MEPIS has discontinued using Ubuntu binary packages in favor of a combination of MEPIS packaged binaries based on Debian and Ubuntu source code which is combined with a Debian Stable OS core and extra packages from Debian package pools.

Warren Woodford of MEPIS explains the change "By using the latest Debian and Ubuntu source code for building user applications, we can provide the best latest versions of the applications users want the most. And by building on top of a Debian Stable core, we can provide a release that has the the stability and long life that users want."

Warren continues "Most Linux users are tired of having to reinstall every 6 months in order to have up-to-date applications. We expect that with this approach MEPIS can offer a superior user experience that will be incrementally upgradeable for 2 years without reinstallation of the OS."

The prebeta includes a 2.6.22 kernel, Debian Etch core, KDE 3.5.7, Firefox 2.0.0.5, Thunderbird 2.0.0.4, and OpenOffice 2.2.1. This is an early release with many rough edges. In particular the splashy boot splash does not run reliably, some extra kernel drivers are not yet compiled for the new kernel, some gui components are not themed for MEPIS, and the prebeta has had very limited testing.

Read the full release announcement here.
Download here.