| MEPIS releases KDE 4 Beta 1 Live DVDs |
Aug. 10, 2007
 Warren Woodford of MEPIS announced on Aug. 10 that his company has built KDE 4 Beta 1 Live DVDs to verify the compatibility of KDE 4 with SimplyMEPIS 7.x.
SimplyMEPIS 7.x marks the return of this popular desktop Linux distribution to using Debian Linux as its base. Warren said, "I decided to share my KDE 4 Beta 1 ISOs, so others could take a first look at KDE 4 and also to demonstrate that I'm serious about the commitment that MEPIS 7.x will be incrementally upgradable."
One of the reasons why Woodford switched from Ubuntu to Debian for the core of MEPIS Linux is that the change makes it easier to keep MEPIS upgraded with the latest applications, he said.
Woodford continued, "We plan to do another KDE 4 integration every few weeks. We expect that KDE 4 will not be final in time for the MEPIS 7.0 release, but by integrating KDE 4 now, we can ensure that 7.0 will be 'KDE 4-ready.'"
The Live DVDs were built using a MEPIS 7.0 Etch core and include the usual MEPIS kernel and hardware compatibility features. Since KDE 4 is functionally different from KDE 3 and also in an early beta state, a minimal KDE 3 installation remains on the disk to facilitate exploration by the user.
The KDE 4 packages were compiled from the Debuntu developer upstream source. Experimental packages from Debian svn and from Ubuntu Universe were tested. Both built and ran, but the Ubuntu packages were more functional.
KDE 4 Beta 1 is a very early release and is meant for developers, testers, and reviewers. Woodford warns, "The release is sluggish, [so] be patient when clicking to launch something. If you look past the rough edges, you will see the beginnings of a world-class desktop experience. If something doesn't work, you could consider reporting a bug at the KDE project, but I would recommend holding off until the next Beta release before submitting a lot of bug reports."
In a statement, Jos Poortvliet of the KDE Project said, "The KDE project is happy to see MEPIS Linux leading the way in bringing the next-generation desktop technology to their users. This decision of early adoption of KDE 4 by the MEPIS developers will ensure a premier KDE experience for the users. We hope KDE 4 will be appreciated, and we look forward to the constructive comments from the MEPIS community."
The 32- and 64-bit ISO images are available in the "testing" subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber's Site and at the MEPIS public mirrors.
—Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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