Just got the MEPIS Linux distro that I ordered from the States a couple of weeks ago. It's a live CD so you can boot it to see what it's like before you install it.
Wow! What _gorgeous_ Linux implementation! First of all it booted flawlessly and picked up all the hardware without a blink. Found and mounted my Windows partitions automatically, picked up the network and configured it on the fly and was up and running sweetly before you could say Jack Robinson. Picked up the Linux boxen and the network printers too. Very impressive. Visually lush and stunning graphics without being fussy. Excellent default application installs without the confusion you sometimes get in Linux when you have half-a-dozen different apps that do more or less the same thing. Clear menuing nicely set up and really good and simple management tools.
Very very impressive indeed. MEPIS Linux is to a large extent the single vision and creation of Warren Woodford in West Virginia and it shows. Unlike some of the largers distros (SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake etc.) you really get the feeling that a single person has created it rather than a committee and it all hangs together perfectly. My Granny could use it straight out of the box (which is more than I can say for SuSE - or XP for that matter). Excellent support from mepis.org (often from Warren himself) and a considerable and very helpful user community.
I've never run a Debian based distro before and I'm looking forward to using apt-get for installing packages rather than rpm. Interesting that MEPIS is already #10 in the popularity stakes of the 260 odd distros available.
I'm clearing out a junk partition to make room for it and will report back on how the full install behaves.
Oh yeah, the price! $10 + $5 shipping....(about 8GBP) gets you the OS, the install, Mozilla, OpenOffice and a selection of packages that should be enough for anyone - and of course there's an ocean of free software out on the Web -
http://www.mepis.org/
XP Professional OS - around 250GBP for a cumbersome insecure mess
Office XP Pro - around 350GBP for another cumbersome insecure mess
If you're not a sheep, is there really any choice any more?
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http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/01/28/2334247 for comments.