Off-label Review of Mepis--as an Enterprise Desktop?!

[Stevo]

http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-carl/...-Label-Mepis-7

Seems pretty fair....

[ko]

Originally Posted by Stevo

http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-carl/...-Label-Mepis-7

Seems pretty fair....

I used Evolution for a short time back in 2003. I was not really pleased with it back then and I never tried it again. Perhaps Evolution throws tantrums in Mepis - or not, I don't know. Mepis has never been profiled for the business environment and thus the connection to Exchange servers may never have been properly tested.

Other than the Evo issue I did not find really useable (based on tests) info on how Mepis performs.

Regards, Ko

[Adrian]

I personally don't like the review, and it's not that I would like it to present MEPIS in much better light, I find talking about look of kicker and the "Mac look" plain silly.

[carlops]

I also was not impressed. If someone feels that Evolution is a necessity for the business, well, they are wrong. Evolution is an unreliable piece of software (can you say crash?), that moreover is so intertwined with Gnome, that you can hardly use it in KDE (try modifying a file association in Evolution and you'll know what I mean).

I am using Thunderbird and Lightning quite satisfactorily in my business Exchange environment, thank you very much.

There will undoubtedly be things that MEPIS is lacking for use in a business environment and that Novell SLED will do better. But please don't tell me that Mint is a business desktop because it happens to be Gnome based and has Evolution on board....

I happened to read the changelogs for the KDE Pim suite in 3.5.9. It looks like the Kolab team are very serious in bringing it up to par. My bet is that with KDE 4.2 the KDE Pim solution is a very serious beast to consider

[benny_fletch]

I would have to agree with Adrain, instead of the review focusing on if Mepis is an Enterprise Level Desktop, it sounded more like how does Mepis compare to Mac OS X and Linux Mint (but mainly Mac OS X).

On the issue of exchange server connectivity, I think this part of the review was also half baked (all puns intended), so Evolution didn't work correctly, it is not even a default package for Mepis (I could be wrong here), which would mean exactly what Ko was referring to, that it is not properly tested. If he was really serious about getting this part working, he could have downloaded the trial of codeweaver's crossover linux v6.2 and installed Outlook 2003, which I know works in Mepis because I did this exact thing successfully last night. What is $40 when your company is footing the bill.

I too, did not like this review.

Despite, thanks for the link Stevo, you should not be blamed for this man's poor article.

[ByCo]

I don't think that running any OS in a virtual machine is really a good test for the OS. Does this author use wine to review Windoze apps?

[m_pav]

I thought some of his comments were well rounded and balanced, but he did harp on about evolution didn't he. The way he wrote the story made it appear as if evolution was one of the default apps on the live cd and hard disk install, when it clearly is not. I wouldn't call evolution a killer app either, especially when google has outpaced them in terms of ease of use within only a couple of years.

I'm using the KDE PIM kontact and the associated programs, and they are perfectly integrated with KDE. As Carlops points out, the 4.x version is shaping up to be a massive improvement.

This guy spent more than 35% of his energy harping on about how his favorite gnome app will not work with KDE, but I don't think Warren likes gnome too much, so my guess is he puts little effort into back or side-porting a fully integrated gnome app so that it will work with his modified KDE. I reckon this nut is trying to do the equivalent of swapping the fluids in a racecar, putting antifreeze into the sump and engine oil into the radiator, then exclaiming the "confounded thing wont work!".

Mike P

[PhantomTramp]

Originally Posted by m_pav

I reckon this nut is trying to do the equivalent of swapping the fluids in a racecar, putting antifreeze into the sump and engine oil into the radiator, then exclaiming the "confounded thing wont work!".

Mike P

[Saist]

I tend to find myself agreeing with the comments about Evolution. I tried to like it, but, even looking back to 2003, 2004, when Thunderbird was considered young... it's spam filters were head over heals what Evolution offered. I eventually gave up writing guides about Evolution because it simply didn't move as a product.

I guess I lump Evolution in with Open Office. Yes, they are nice programs in the sense that they offer compatibility with Microsoft products, and they do fulfill a business need...

but at the same time... that's sort of like deciding you want to go swimming, and choose the sewer plant as your destination of choice. Sure... it's got water... but EWWWW.

In some aspects, examining Mepis as a business release would have made sense a few years back. There was at one point an official branded Mepis version for the small office, and I believe that past-partner Frontier had a branded version of Mepis built with small office needs in mind.

However, since at least Mepis 6 series, I do not recall Mepis having a branded version for office use... and I find myself agreeing with others that somebody who reviews Mepis from the point of an office desktop isn't probably going to do a good job of it.

In this particular review, the mention of Evolution, and the quoted constant harpings do raise cause for concern. Yes, in some cases you do want to review a distribution based on how well some non-included software operates. I'm thinking about stuff like proprietary graphics drivers. It's a big issue if ATi, Intel, or Nvidia cards don't work out of the box.

However, for large applications like Evolution, that aren't built against QT to begin with... I'm not sure belongs in a review of a QT based distribution... which Mepis is.

[m_pav]

I placed a comment on his article. It didn't appear straight away, took a few hours, so I guess it had to go through moderator approval. He or somebody must be OK with what I wrote??

Mike P