Hi, here I want to give my experiences with SimplyMEPIS 6.0 on my ThinkPad Z60m. As you will see, I don't have to say anything extraordinary yet, but hope this page is kind of informative, though. Note: This page is not going to be continued because I switched already to another distribution.
CPU: Intel Celeron M 1.5 GHz
RAM: 512 MB
HDD: 80 GB SATA
Optical drive: MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-830Sx
Graphics: Intel GMA 915
Click here to see the lspci -v output.
I don't want to say much about MEPIS itself, you can read enough through the web. Just: It's a Ubuntu-based bleeding edge linux distribution which contains many non-free driver and multimedia packages (e.g. graphic card drivers for NVidia and ATI or libmad). You have access to all Debian and Ubuntu packages through APT, and many How-Tos and such things for Ubuntu are applicative for MEPIS, too. Its origin is in the USA, and you can fell this issue at the locales, which aren't great out of the box (I speak about the German ones). Simply get the Ubuntu-ones... If you would like to get more information, have a look at Distrowatch or the project homepage.
...runs problem free (you didn't even have the chance to modify much things...), if you chosen correct locale and kernel options at the boot menu at first start-up. My Windows partition was already shrunk, so I can't say if this would work. The rescue partition wasn't included to the boot menu, you have to hack /boot/grub/menu.lst yourself. Add the following:
title Rescue System
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
It is necessary to pass vga=874 to the kernel when you first boot from the CD to ensure console and X11 resolutions are correctly set. Then everything, including DRI, work out of the box.
Works out of the box (kernel module sdhci).
Works out of the box (kernel module p4-clockmod).
Works out of the box (kernel module snd-hda-intel).
Works out of the box (kernel module ipw2200).
Works out of the box (kernel module tg3).
PCMCIA works fine with my SAA7134-based TV-Card (AVerMedia AVerTV Cardbus). I can't say anything about Expresscards, 'cause I haven't one...
Both work out of the box, but the delivered /etc/X11/xorg.conf disabled scrolling with the touch pad. I replaced it with the one Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake brought, now even scrolling works. (I am too lazy to check the original file manually...)
Works out of the box via KDE Control Center / kmilo. Most of the keys work fine such as volume, brightness, ThinkLight and zoom. The so called multimedia keys play, pause and so on don't work yet.
Not yet tested.
Not yet tested, but seems to work.
Not yet tested.
Works out of the box.
Not yet tested.
Not yet tested.
Works (of course) out of the box, but without DMA. Thinkwiki.org seems to have a solution, but I wont test it.
Doesn't work out of the box. It suspends fine using KPowersave, but after awakening the screen keeps turned off. Indeed, the system seems to be on and can be rebooted cleanly by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Remove.
When you close and reopen the lid, you also get rubbish on X. You've to switch to console and back to X to get a clean screen (session locked message).
...isn't detected by KPowersave, but works fine with Fn+Pos1 and Fn+End.
© Stefan Bauer 2006-12-30