SimplyMEPIS 12 Gets an Early Alpha

Warren Woodford posted a one sentence announcement of an early alpha for the next MEPIS release, 11.9.60. Woodford has always been a man of a few words, but there are no hints whatsoever as to what one might expect. So, our only choice is to boot it, if it'll boot.

SimplyMEPIS is a difficult distribution to follow. MEPIS is almost a one-man operation, but he does have a few contributors helping out. But for the life of me, I can't find any public record of their discourse. I can almost imagine they meet in some remote underground parking garage in the shadows to whisper plans of upcoming MEPIS releases. But fortunately, the early alpha booted so we can just see for ourselves.

The boot screen retains the image from 11.x for now, but the login screen and desktop background indicate Warren is starting from a blank slate. No obvious issues arose during light testing. Some software includes:

* Linux 3.3.2
* Xorg X Server 1.12.1
* GCC 4.7.1
* LibreOffice 3.5.4
* KDE 4.8.4
* VLC 2.0.2
* GIMP 2.8.0

There's a growing thread discussing the testing on the MEPIS Community Forum. The faithful are finding issues and reporting them, but overall, this release was pretty uneventful for an alpha. The best part is that we now know that a SimplyMEPIS 12 is definitely coming.