Morgantown, WV – MEPIS has released SimplyMEPIS 7.0. The isos for the 32 and 64 versions are in the released directory at the MEPIS subscriber site and public mirrors. MEPIS 7.0 offers up-to-date user applications delivered on top of a Debian stable core.

MEPIS LLC and MEPIS Linux were founded by industry veteran Warren Woodford in November 2002. Warren had tried several distributions of Linux, but found that they all fell short of his vision for how a Linux desktop should work. Inspired by his experience as a NeXT developer, Warren decided to try his hand at creating a Linux distribution that “just works.” The first version of MEPIS Linux was released to the public in May 2003. By September 2003, MEPIS had jumped to #10 at distrowatch.com.

In 2006, MEPIS transitioned from using Debian packages to using Ubuntu packages. SimplyMEPIS 6.0, released in July 2006, is the first version of MEPIS to incorporate the Ubuntu packages and repositories. The MEPIS team has plans to begin work on a 64-bit version of SimplyMEPIS, as well as new releases of MEPISLite and ForensicMEPIS.

Some of the important packages included with the 7.0 release are: an updated and security patched 2.6.22.14 kernel, Xorg 7.1.0, KDE 3.5.8, OpenOffice 2.3.0, Firefox 2.0.0.11, Thunderbird 2.0.0.6, Digikam 0.9.2, Sun Java 6.00, Amarok 1.4.7, mplayer 1.0.rc1, fuse driver 2.7.0, ntfs-3g 1.710, madwifi-ng Atheros driver 0.9.3.2, wpa-supplicant 0.6.0, ALSA sound drivers 1.0.15, libglib2.0 2.14.0, libgtk2.0 2.10.13, and QT 4.3.1-1.

Additional packages in the MEPIS 7.0 pool include: acroread 7.0.9-0, icaclient 10.6-1, evolution 2.10.3, NVIDIA driver 100.14.19-1, NVIDIA legacy drivers 1.0.9639 and 1.0.7185, AMD fglrx driver 8.43.2-1, libgnome2 2.18.0, compiz 0.6.3, and compiz-fusion 0.6.0.

This release contains a new desktop theme and a detailed user manual, both developed and contributed by the MEPIS community.

When asked about future plans for MEPIS, Warren said "Already the community wants to make improvements to the excellent desktop theme they created recently. And there's always more to be done. I think we'll have a minor update to the isos about once a month. Then around April or May we can start the process of synchronizing with the upcoming Debian Lenny release."

ISO images are in the 'released' subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber's Site and at the MEPIS public mirrors [1]. To support the ongoing development of MEPIS, please go to the MEPIS store and become a MEPIS subscriber.