For my Dad: Mepis or Ubuntu?

[Sepero]

I know that Mepis and Ubuntu are two of the best desktop distros around, but I wanna know their _flaws_. I read in an article that sometimes you can install a program on Ubuntu, and it doesn't create an icon in the menu. That can be a pretty serious problem if my dad is going to be using this.

As Mepis or Ubuntu users, what big or small problems have you had with your distro?


PS
Please, no wars over desktop environment.

[mrBen]

AFAIK Ubuntu will only add menu items when you install software from the main Ubuntu tree, and not vanilla Debian software.

I believe that the Ubuntu install is not quite as good as Mepis, although I had no problems myself (and haven't tried Mepis).

The whole 'no root' thing in Ubuntu is a love/hate thing depending on who you talk to, as is the integration of HAL/GNOME Volume Manager.

It's probably best to suck it and see, TBH.

[infiniphunk]

What kind of computer does he have? Depending on the hardware involved, one may be better than the other. I find that Ubuntu is better than Simplymepis in some ways.
Is you dad going to prefer gnome or kde? Right now, Kde is a lot nicer on Mepis than Ubuntu.

[rocketpcguy]

for your dad? dont you think mandrake/suse/fedora would be better. for example, if he wants to change a setting, its easier for him to click menu--> configure instead of sifting through text files.

to impress him, you could disable unncessary services to speed booting up. also, baghira ALWAYS makes an impression

[Sepero]

Originally posted by infiniphunk
What kind of computer does he have? Depending on the hardware involved, one may be better than the other.His pc is a little older than average, but why would hardware matter? Have you seen one of them take a much bigger performance hit than the other?

I find that Ubuntu is better than Simplymepis in some ways.:( That is very vague. In what ways is Ubuntu better?

I want to put a system on his pc that, for the most part, he can be the administrator.

[P. N. Guin]

I am currently running Mepis on an older PIII 800Mhz machine w/ 256Mb of RAM and haven't noticed any performance issues. My soundcard did fail to load correctly, but that was the only hardware issue. It seems to be a bit of a known problem with Mepis, at least judging from the MepisLovers forum. I haven't given Ubuntu enough of a try to comment on it in detail.

One of the great things about both these distros is that they're both available in LIVE versions...something I hope all distros start doing in the future. You should dl a copy of both, burn the .iso's and load them using the actual pc your dad is going to be using, and sit down with him and discuss his opinion of both of them firsthand. Given that his computer/Linux experience may be very different from the ppl on JL, it'd prolly be a good idea to let him test-drive them both...luckily with the live cd's, you don't have to build the whole system and then trash it if he doesn't like it.

A word of caution: The performance will be a bit slower when using the live cd's because it is running completely from your CD-ROM drive.

[Zyglow]

Not sure if this would be an issue for you, but last time I tried Mepis it did not detect my wireless card. Where as Ubuntu did not have a single issue. As for the software install issue with Ubuntu, I think this is more related to Gnome 2.8 than it is the distro itself. I've loaded several packages that did not show up until I restarted X. I've had other issues with Ubuntu like Mplayer not compiling, and errors while installing Totem-xine. All of which could have been solved had I put some time into it.

I can't give an honest opinion about Mepis because of the wireless network issue. It didn't work, so it was removed. I'm just picky like that. If your dad needs something that "just works", Ubuntu may be for him. On the otherhand, I feel that Mepis is probably more mature and may give less headaches as far as software is concerned.

[Sepero]

I would also consider the free version of Xandros. Unfortunately, I don't have the bandwidth to download them all. So I need to pick one, I'm just not sure which one to pick.

[rbrimhall]

Well my vote is obvious... see my sig;)

Ubuntu installs just what you need and has proven to be very solid for me... it has small quirks but I've yet to find a distro that doesn't on my hardware. With Universe and Multiverse you have everything you could possibly need but the only things I've installed have been mono, some mono apps, and multimedia support for DVD and Mp3 playback (all added menu items by the way). I like it because we will get a new preview release everytime GNOME puts out a release which is good for me b/c I prefer GNOME as a desktop. Ubuntu "just works."

Cons for Ubuntu are that it is still very young and may lack some "polish" that other distros may have like a bootsplash, graphical grub, etc.

MEPIS is also good but I gave up after trying to install GNOME and ended up with a half MEPIS/half Debian distro that seemed very unstable... I think this is where Ubuntu has taken the right move by porting over debs to their own repos rather than mixing up repos from debian proper.

just my .02

[EnigmaOne]

Get SimplyMEPIS-2004.04 and Ubuntu-Warty.

Either one is easy enough to install that you can have your dad try them both and keep the one he likes...after all, this is for HIM, isn't it?

[CoffeeMan]

I agree with lupin_the_3rd, and Ubuntu's Gnome desktop is simpler than MEPIS's chopped-down version of KDE.
But EnigmaOne has an even better point; get em both, because It is your opinion that matters for this.