martes, 26 de abril de 2011

MEPIS 11 almost Here! Testing RC3

I'm writing this post from my MEPIS 11 RC3 live DVD.


MEPIS 11 RC3 comes with Firefox 4 and Konqueror as its browsers, K3b for burning media, Amarok to play sound files and several video players (KMplayer and GNOME Mplayer.) It also has the GIMP to edit images and for its office suit, it includes LibreOffice 3.3.2. KDE partition manager has substituted GParted since MEPIS 8.5. Faithful to its tradition, MEPIS 11 can be used as a rescue CD or as a live OS should you decide not to install it.


How is it different from its previous test releases?

I'd say that the previous bugs I encountered are gone:

Desktop effects are deactivated by default, but they work once enabled.

The problem mounting Windows partitions is gone. Now you don't need Dolphin as Su for viewing a NTFS partition.

Those were the issues I encountered in the previous alphas and betas. I'm glad they are gone.

What's new?

The MEPIS QuickStart sits on your desktop. It is a very valuable tool for newcomers because it introduces basic aspects ranging from the KDE panel to alternative desktops.

Along with the MEPIS QuickStart, you also have an updated copy of the MEPIS manual. I've found it very useful myself.

MEPIS 11 RC3 Live DVD also includes several packages its predecessors didn't have:

Kolourpaint (Believe it or not, I always installed that one! GIMP is too advanced for me!)

Inkscape

Frozen Bubble (I also installed that one by myself in the past!)

Finally, you get to see a splashy when you log off the Live DVD. I wonder why I didn't see it when booting the system.

So far, this is what I've seen. I'll try the DVD in different computers to see how it behaves. I am very pleased with this new release.

3 comentarios:

  1. Did you try installing transcode ? It was never installable on Mepis for me. Does the video detection give a reasonable resolution before installing the nvidia drivers ( also another persistent Mepis problem on all of my hardware ) ?

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  2. To tell you the truth, I didn't know about Transcode. A console-based program is too advanced for me at this point. I haven't tried to install it myself, but checking out info about it, I guess the problem is that Transcode needs FFmpeg 0.4.9-pre and Mepis has 0.4.6 installed.

    About video resolution, I didn't have any issues since alpha 2 or 3, but my hardware may be different. So far, I tested the DVD on other 3 computers and their resolution looks reasonable to my untrained eye.

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  3. @ Megatotoro
    Make it four computers. I just tested it in mine and I don't see any problems.

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