Return to Mepis

July 14th, 2005 | No Comments | Posted in Technology

I flirted with Fedora as my Linux option of choice for a couple of months, but I’ve now returned to Mepis.

I first used Fox, which is a promising Fedora derivative. I’ll revisit Fox when they move out of beta mode and improve their English version. It has a great look and feel, and the update tool is better than Fedora. The main downside was that OpenOffice 2 came in Italian … not my best language; only slightly better than my non-existent Icelandic and Swahili.

I then tested the new Fedora 4 and spent several weeks trying to like it. The look and feel is great and hardware detection was good.

There are just too many issues with it though, especially for me as a non-technical user. For example, I couldn’t connect to my Windows partition, no matter what I tried. I’m sure it can be done, but the knowledge was beyond me and I’m fairly computer savvy.

Fedora is Gnome based, which I don’t mind, but its KDE support is lacking. The distro doesn’t come with Digikam, which I consider the best Linux program for storing and displaying photographs. I tried several Digikam RPMs, but kept getting obscure dependency issues, which I couldn’t resolve.

So it’s back to Mepis. I never really left because it’s still on my spare computer. Mepis is good because it simply works!

All my hardware was detected. MS Windows access required no effort on my part. And Debian’s apt-get is by far the most reliable method of installing and updating Linux software.

I’m a compulsive experimenter when it comes to Linux, and I’ll probably give Kanotix a try on my spare computer now that Mepis is safely ensconced again on the main home PC.

Kanotix is Knoppix and Debian based, and is supposedly designed for hard-drive installation. It has OpenOffice Beta 2, which is one advantage over Mepis.

These articles might be of interest:

Feathertop via Bungalow Spur

The population of Victoria is five million people, but I was the only one of them today on the summit of our second-highest peak, Mt Feathertop.
The mountain was awe inspiring, humbling, powerful and beautiful in a mesmerising package of contradictions.
Normally I have Friday spare to pursue private business, but I swapped it for today to [...]

Aral Sea disaster

I saw a disturbing report on SBS news last night about the Aral Sea disaster in Kazakhstan. The world’s fourth-largest inland sea has been decimated by commercial exploitation and mismanagement. Here are some of the facts:
Forty years ago the Aral Sea surface was 66,100 square kilometers with an average depth of 16.1 metres and a [...]

The twins hatch

Well it’s almost sunk in that I’m a Dad again. The twins were dragged reluctantly into the world at 10.26am and 10.27am on Tuesday, December 16, 2003 almost two weeks before Juliet would have been full term in her labor.
The vital details:
James Peter, weight 6lb 12oz
Margaret Johanna, weight 6lb
Mum and babies are doing well. Hopefully [...]

Breaker Morant

I wrote this article in February 2002 in response to a campaign by Senator Julian McGauran and Tim Fischer to obtain a pardon for English officer “Breaker” Morant, who ordered the killing of prisoners in the Anglo/South African War.
I was annoyed that McGauran took up this issue without any community consultation. It was the only [...]