MEPIS Community Forum

Thanks Michel!
KBD

I too have continuously been flat out amazed by this feature? of Mepis / Debian.

The quality in terms of ease of use increases.
The fit and finish continues to be more polished.
The applicability, without tweaking, to an expanding array of video / audio / peripherals .
And all without significant changes in basic hardware requirements past needing 1 GB of RAM

How do you explain that ??

I know that reviews tend to focus on the new and exciting abilities / features of new versions of OSs, but over the years I have come to value the stability and lack of bloatware as much, if not more than the hyped whiz / bang.

It certainly helps that the Linux kernel is used in a wide variety of embedded products with limited resources, and that manufacturers of those products (or the components therein) are involved in kernel development. There's nothing like self-interest to keep code lean & efficient.
There's a different mindset when you're coding for a device with ram measured in kilobytes instead of gigabytes.
I know because the first coding I ever did was on a DEC PDP-8/e with 8K core memory shared between 4 TTYs (yes, actual ASR32 teletype machines - in 1973 video terminals would have cost much more than the computer).

Ditto.

I think it just needs a one liner suggesting that security updates should be available until around 2013/14, based on the best estimates based on what Debian has provided in the past... Apart from that, it pretty much covers what happens in reality. i.e. the community supports as long as there is a demand.