Mepis Gnome Remaster

Mepis Gnome Remaster is an unofficial remaster version of Mepis, changing the default desktop from KDE to Gnome.
More information including download sources is available in mepislovers forum.

Mepis is always one of my fav distro as it always works for me.
However after using Ubuntu I am getting used to gnome, so I am really glad that now there is a gnome version of Mepis.

I installed it on my aging laptop (Toshiba Tecra PIII 850Mhz 256MB RAM) and as I expected mostly everything works out of the box.

Some notes:

1. Boot up and shut down takes a little bit longer.
2. Screen resolution is perfectlly configured.
   As always, Mepis automatically recognize the trident cyberblade chip used by this laptop.
3. My wifi usb adapter works out of the box (it uses zd1211rw driver).
   By default nm-applet is not available, connection is exclusively handled by Mepis Network Assistant and so far it works flawlessly.
   (Edit: the new Mepis Network Assistant has been improved, now I can see and choose the available connections just like using gnome net work manager)
   
4. I removed the sensor applet from the panel as it showed error message.
5. I canged the default boot splash, wallpaper and theme as they are too "strong" for my taste :)
   Changed the boot splash from Applications / System Tools / Configuration Editor menu, select apps | gnome-session | options | edit splash_image.
   I also added upper panel as I am more familiar with two gnome panels.
   
   
   
   
6. Suspend to RAM works out of the box.
7. By default there is no office application, so I installed Open Office 3.0 by following the steps from here.
8. Other than Open Office I also installed gthumb (for simple picture resizing and editing) and system-config-printer-gnome (printing tools).
9. In the main menu there was "Debian" sub menu which was disabled.
   Enabling this sub menu reveals many important applications (for example: HPLIP printing/fax tools)
10. Like the original version of Mepis, multimedia support (flash, java, mp3) works out of the box, but Mplayer could not play my dvd movie.

So far using Mepis Gnome Remaster in my old laptop has been a very positive experience. Everything is just running smooth and stable.
Most notably it feels light and fast, better than any other Gnome distro I tried on this laptop.
I like it a lot.


(Last edited: 06/04/2009)