Jan 7, 2011 14:17 GMT  ·  By

Warren Woodford has announced yesterday, January 6th, the immediate availability for testing of the SimplyMEPIS 11.0 Beta 1 operating system, available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

SimplyMEPIS 11.0 Beta 1 brings various small bug fixes since the Alpha 4 release, made available on December 8th. It includes a new Linux kernel, version 2.6.36, and an early build of the KDE Software Compilation 4.5 created by the Debian KDE team. Moreover, the Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Beta 8 web browser is present in this beta testing release.

"This beta includes a 2.6.36 kernel. We are using an early Debianized build of KDE 4.5 but we're hoping the excellent Debian KDE Team will have a newer version available in the Debian pools before MEPIS 11.0 goes final."

"We were fortunate that Firefox 4.0b8 became available in time to be included in the Beta. That seemed to be an important addition, so 11.0 will be more compatible with HTML5 based web content." - said Warren Woodford in the official release announcement.

SimplyMEPIS is a Linux distribution based on Debian Lenny. It features an LTS (Long Term Support) kernel and provides users with upgrades for all important packages. The MEPIS Assistant tools ensure that SimplyMEPIS can be used successfully in a desktop environment.

The SimplyMEPIS OS is created to replace or work side by side with Microsoft's Windows 7, Vista or XP on personal computers, and with Windows and Mac OS X on Apple computers. MEPIS is also available, unofficially, for ARM processors.

The stable version, SimplyMEPIS 8.5.03, is available for download from Softpedia. The final release of SimplyMEPIS 11.0 will be available this spring!

Download SimplyMEPIS 11.0 Beta 1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.