MEPIS 11 RC1: A Quick, Informal Glimpse

Even though I'm already running MEPIS 11 Beta 3 as my production system, I downloaded the RC version 1 to test it.


The Live DVD booted with no issue on my box. That's great. I still need to try it on older systems, so I'll wait a bit.

As with Beta 3, desktop effects are disabled by default. If I'm not mistaken, only Alpha 1 or 2 could actually use compositing right off the Live DVD on my PC, so I activated desktop effects without much expectation...

Whoa! They do work! MEPIS 11 RC1 brought back KDE's eye candy right from the DVD. Nice!

Sound? No problem. It stopped being a problem since Alpha 2 in my case.

Video? Fine. I even inserted a movie DVD into my second drive and could watch a bit using KMplayer and GNOME Mplayer. However, I prefer to use Kaffeine or VLC, which I will have to install myself from the repositories.

Youtube played fine, too. Firefox 4 flies! I'm actually posting this from the Live DVD session. I have to congratulate the documentation team because both the MEPIS Manual and the MEPIS QuickStart are concise, helpful and friendly.

This RC comes with LibreOffice and its Database manager is included. I wonder if that will cause me problems when enabling Asian languages.

Concerning languages, this RC comes only in English, as it has been since the first Alpha. I still hope some other languages may be added to the live DVD when MEPIS 11 goes final. That was a very nice touch for MEPIS 8.5 USB.

I still have to use Dolphin as Su to mount my XP partition. Not that I care much about it; I actually like it that way, but that adds an extra step for users less experienced than I am.

I will test the DVD on other computers to see how it works. So far, I'm really satisfied with the progress of this distro!