SimplyMepis 11.0 on Its Way!

The first alpha of SimplyMepis 11.0 has been released. Yesterday Warren Woodford teased his Twitter followers images might be coming today and, sure enough, 32- and 64-bit ISOs were uploaded to Mepis servers a few hours ago. While details are sketchy, this alpha is based on the unfinished Debian Squeeze, with Linux kernel 2.6.36, and featuring KDE 4.

True to its conservative nature, this is the first SimplyMepis to offer KDE 4. Warren was probably the last KDE 3 holdout, waiting for KDE 4 to stablize. KDE 4.4.5 is the version currently being shipped, still several KDE releases behind. However, many users have reported performance regressions with KDE 4.5, so it may be to Mepis users' advantage to stick with what some believe has been the best KDE 4 release so far.

It looks as though 11.0 is going to break the 700 MB CD barrier, propelling it into the DVD-zone. Current alphas are 801 MB, but rumors are floating around that SimplyMepis will now include lots more software goodies since that barrier is down. On the other hand, further speculation is that "lite" for CDROM and USB versions may also be released. We'll have to wait and see.

It's been said that "Warren's alpha's are like other folk's betas, betas like RCs, etc, etc" but several posts to the MepisLovers forum indicate there are hardware issues. Several people, like yours truly, are experiencing boot showstoppers while a others are having graphic issues.

While 11.0 is definitely on its way, it appears many users will have to wait until the next release to see what's new. Stay tuned.