| Ubuntu MEPIS? |
Feb. 10, 2006
The good news is that the long-awaited new version of MEPIS's flagship Linux distribution, SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3 has finally arrived. The curious news is that MEPIS founder Warren Woodford is considering building future MEPIS releases from Ubuntu rather than from Debian sources.
In a story on NewsForge, "MEPIS may be going Ubuntu", by Joe Brockmeier, Woodford says, in essence, that Debian development has become so busy, that's he's finding it hard to keep up with it. Therefore, he's looking to the more stable and predictable launch cycles of Ubuntu for the next edition of MEPIS.
That said, he's not committed to Ubuntu yet. Woodford has, however, taken the step of talking to his community about the possibility. According to Woodford, about half of the users will be happy to follow the distribution where ever he takes it, while the other half is divided between those who hate Ubuntu or love Debian.
Some have, of course, suggested that the next version of MEPIS simply be built on the DCC Alliance's DCC 3.0. This is a common core of essential programs or "packages" from Debian GNU with DCC Alliance member contributed additions to attain LSB (Linux Standard Base) compliance.
MEPIS has been one of the leaders of the DCC Alliance programming. However, as Brockmeier reported, Woodford isn't in favor of basing MEPIS's future on the DCC Alliance's common core, because, as Woodford said, "it's unclear where the DCC is going."
Nevertheless, Woodford is also still working on the DCC Alliance Common Core. Indeed, he is hard at work building the ia32 and amd64 kernels for DCC 3.1. This next version is scheduled to come on at the same time as the next edition of the LSB, the week of March 13.
Of course, there remains the possibility that the Ubuntu and DCC Alliance camps can work together as they both strive to produce the best possible Debian-based distributions.
In the event that Woodford does decide to switch the core of MEPIS to Ubuntu, the first version would likely appear in May and be based on the forthcoming Dapper Drake Ubuntu release.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
 Ziff Davis Internet senior editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about technology and business since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the
way.
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