Hi,

I would like to know about the genesis of the distros. I read the Wiki pages of each distro. I surely didn't read hard enough, these distros are new to me. Can you please point me toward to more documentation about:

Q1- What was bad in Debian that prompted Warren Woodford to create MEPIS? He said in
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"MEPIS was designed as an alternative to SUSE Linux, Red Hat Linux, and Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake) which, in the creator Warren Woodford's opinion, were too difficult for the average user."

But still what did he do to make MEPIS simpler?

Q2- As if it was not enough, anticapilista give MEPIS another spin to create AntiX. Same question than Q1, why?

Thanks in advance for any input.

The following link has a fairly good description of all the major distros, some details about their origins and a good review of pro's and con's for each. In addition, they even suggest alternates based on the main distro. It's a good read, and also a good way to keep up with releases.


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I hope it answers some of your questions. I don't have specific answers about MEPIS since I've never used it.

Pedro

the original reason why warren created mepis, i do not know it. but i'll try to answer this by explaining a distribution. basic a distro is someone's operating system put on a cd. their apps, their wallpapers, their themes, their icons, their desktop environment, their menus and their tweaks to the kernel and so on.
antix is a light version of mepis. it uses the mepis kernel and the mepis tools but not the rest. antix is designed to be light therefor it doesn't have a desktop environment (mepis uses kde), uses light and small apps, wallpaper and themes are different from mepis, antix uses debian testing repos and so on. this is the simplest way i can explain it. here is a map with the linux distro timeline. as an example ubuntu is based on debian, just like mepis is.
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I imagine that when MEPIS was launched the major distros weren't very friendly with the common home user.

As for antiX, here are some links from the time it was launched:

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Although I started to use Linux only last year after some years without Internet at home, I remember of first getting interested about it while searching for a lightweight system for a PIII 450 MHz I had and stumbled upon one of those reviews above. Actually the first time I used Linux (following a guide linked from the antiX home page to burn the iso) was, if I recall well, with antiX-M7.2 (but I couldn't manage to get it to connect to the Internet through dial-up - no wonder, since I don't know if I could manage that even today __{{emoticon}}__ ).

Q1. As already stated, Warren back in 2003 wanted to develop a user-friendly distro. Back then linux was very much a geek's distro, in particular Debian with installation being via a cli, editing of files to get screen resolution and video drivers set up etc. Warren's 'invention' was to create an installable livecd (maybe the first to do so) and via the MEPIS tools (installer, xorg, system, user, network) in an easy and intuitive way (at least compared to most linux at that time). Mandriva was the model as it was too aiming at 'Linux for the masses', but Warren chose the Debian base instead.

Q2. As ice-m plus antiX was/is designed for older boxes, 128MB RAM and PII work well enough for some people and there are posts from users satisfied with performance on such old boxes. Nowadays, antiX has got a bit 'heavier' due to its base getting heavier ie Debian, but it should still work with 128MB RAM, 256MB RAM should see a marked improvement.
So if you have 256MB RAM, put simply, many distros won't even boot and if they do, performance will be sluggish. Try running the latest (K/X)Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, LinxMint, Mandriva, Fedora (all top 5 on distrowatch) on a box with 256MB RAM.

Thank you for the links to extra readings. Thanks ICE-M for the graph showing all the Linux distro forks (
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" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false). That is really amazing that there are that much diversity of distros out there.

Now I think I know why MEPIS was started. As a late comer in Linux scene, I take the notion of graphical installer, hardware auto detection for granted. MEPIS (or may be SimplyMEPIS, is it its full name?) is still vague but I am not interested in it, so issue closed.

Now AntiX which I would like to know more about. From my own view, AntiX derives quite far from MEPIS. Could it be forked directly from Debian rather than from MEPIS? Or more exactly, does the future of AntiX depend on that of MEPIS?

Please note, this is just a question to understand the generality. I have no bias and in anyway not enough knowledge to start a distro conflict.

If you like an more debian based system all you have to do is install an debian kernel.
mepis is just an kernel, mepis tools and a bunch of helpful people on top of the debian system.

AntiX depends on MEPIS?
Don't think so - but WHY not?
An debian system made to be easy with alot of helpful folks at the forums.

Its hard to start a distro conflict on same based systems. __{{emoticon}}__

have fun

Basically the only difference between Mepis and Debian is the tools. The tools were originally closed source which is a major difference in Debian who insists on free and open source. Your free to remove the mepis tools and run straight Debian if you wish.

AntiX has just basically stripped down Mepis. Even with the current version it's still lighter on the resources than any full desktop environment. Why waste resources on look and feel when it could be used for the apps.

Realistically you are free to use/customize/install/remove as you wish, in my view the whole point of Linux.

I am just end user and I have no idea how to make Debian become AntiX. I was just curious as why AntiX needs this MEPIS middleman.

Ok so that's the MEPIS tools that help to make the starting point easier for AntiX. All right, but what are these tools? I have visited all the menu items in AntiX I didn't see anything that say"MEPIS tools".

The MEPIS tools are the Mepis installer, the Network tool, a system configuration tool, a graphics driver installer and a user accounts manager.

They are, with the exception of the installer scattered in antiX Control Center.
The network tool is side-by-side with other similar tools in antiX like ceni, rutilt and Wicd.
The graphics driver installer is in a lot of cases superseded by the much more flexible and capable smxi script, but I don't know if there are some other still useful functions on it (must open and check).

These were tools that one day made the difference for Mepis, I think. Also there's the Mepis kernel.

As antiX evolves and matures it gradually finds its own way, so its a perfectioning process. But with Linux no one should be ashamed of borrowing whatever is useful from anywhere at any time.