I've finally got a fully working Linux instance running alongside XP on my laptop. For some reason it would not even look at Gutsy, taking about 5 minutes to boot. I've been messing about with Mepis off and on for a few months though, and its finally fallen into place.
Mepis is based on Ubuntu, with all the Linux goodness that that entails, and has a KDE front end (so more like Kubuntu really - Ubuntu uses Gnome). Installation was fairly painless, wih the only fly in the ointment being (predictably) wireless. Five minutes with ndiswrapper got this sorted and then I was able to start getting updates down.
 | Left: My Mepis desktop, tweaked to my liking - Menu bar at the bottom of the screen autohides a-la XP
Mepis comes with Beryl and Emerald, which give all the wizzy effects like desktops-on-a-cube and Vista-like eyecandy. These did work, but the Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics chipset on this laptop was not very happy with it, and the whole thing was a bit flakey. Binning Beryl and Emerald and returning to the default screen manager fixed things nicely. I like the eyecandy, but this is a fairly lowly laptop after all, not a swanky media centre. I still get things like multi desktops, which is nice |
| As you'd expect Mepis comes with rucks of programs ready to go, and many more available for free download via Synaptic PackageManager. |  |
 | One of the great things about Linux is how easy it is to virtualise other OS's. VirtualBox is readily available, and this was my weapon of choice. I wanted a version of Windows running under Mepis, simply because its sometimes useful to have. as you can see I have Windows 98 runnable as a virtual machine. I chose 98 'cos its small, and I had a spare licence knocking about.... |
...none of which explains why I also virtualised Beos. Beos is an OS from the 90's that never really went anywhere. It also is of no earthly use to me, but I've always wanted to have a play. But, there you are - Beos running under Mepis. It doesn't like my graphics card for some reason, which explains why its monochrome, and probably the glacial speed (the GL Rotating Teapot is showing 3.4 (not 34) fps).
If I had a floppy drive Windows 3.1 would be next ;) |  |
