All Linux users have their own vision of the ideal distribution. Some people crave stability, others want new and exciting features, some people are very security focused and others are concerned about licensing. Warren Woodford has his own vision and he's made it accessible to the world via MEPIS. This week he was willing to take a few minutes to talk about his creation.

SimplyMepis, or Mepis for short, is a distribution targeted towards new users that has the intended goal of providing a good distribution that is easy to use. Version 7.0, which was my first experience with Mepis was pretty good. But past success means little if the newer version doesn't deliver. So let's see how SimplyMepis 8 does.

I had the opportunity recently to test Linux, the freeware operating system, as a standalone, bootable CD. The version I tried was SimplyMEPIS 7.0, a configuration of the Linux OS and many popular open source programs, with a good graphic user interface (GUI).