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SimplyMEPIS 6.5 beta ready for 3D action
Feb. 13, 2007

MEPIS founder and chief maintainer Warren Woodford announced today that Beta 5 of SimplyMEPIS 6.5, featuring a 2.6.17 kernel, default KDE 3.5.3 desktop, and 3D support, is ready for download. Additionally, "Xorg 7.1 and lots of new drivers make this release Beryl-ready," according to Woodford.

Beryl is a combined window manager and composite manager that uses OpenGL to provide acceleration. It is designed to be highly flexible, extensible, and portable, the Beryl Project website says.

"The changes are so profound that I've revised the version number to 6.5," Woodford said. "A 6.0 user can still upgrade fully to the new release and SimplyMEPIS still relies 80 percent on Dapper Drake (Ubuntu) packages, but the rest are now provided by MEPIS and maintained by MEPIS. During the coming week we will be integrating Beryl to work the MEPIS way. Users will have the option of running Beryl or not."

Beta 5 adds the following features, according to Woodford:
  • Xorg 7.1
  • NVidia driver 1.0.9746
  • fglrx driver 8.31.5
  • madwifi-ng 0.92
  • Java 6
  • updated LAN drivers for E1000, forcedeth, and tg3
  • support for Jmicron on Asus motherboards
In addition, an update of wireless packages has greatly improved reliability of wireless connections with networkmanager, Woodford said.

The MEPIS package pools have been renamed to reflect the name change of the release; the new release pools are mepis32-6.5 and mepis64-6.5. Users of 32 bit SimplyMEPIS should also continue to enable the simply32-6.0 pool. Users are also reminded to disable the Ubuntu restricted pools, since they contain kernel updates that are not MEPIS-compatible.

"I'll be working on the MEPIS integration of Beryl," Woodford added. "The Beryl packages will be available in the MEPIS pools tomorrow (Feb. 14). I encourage everyone to test Beryl right away for basic functionality. If you want Beryl to work well with KDE, you need to pitch in and at least test it and report problems to the Beryl Project. They can use your help. With a little luck, the final release of 6.5 will be on Feb. 24."

The SimplyMEPIS-32 and SimplyMEPIS-64 version 6.5 Beta 5 ISO images are available for download in the "testing" subdirectory at the MEPIS subscriber's site, as well as on various MEPIS public mirrors. Satisfied users are encouraged to make a contribution or make a purchase at the MEPIS store.



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