Cooperation between MEPIS and Kubuntu?

[Simon Rönnqvist]

  Hi!

Thanks for the answers... This is probably true in general
But what I'm interested in is, in what way does Kubuntu's and SimplyMEPIS's 
goals differ. If they should be two separate distros, then why? The only two 
big differences that I see is that Kubuntu is more pure KDE and pure free 
software, while as SimplyMEPIS has a bunch of non-free stuff installed by 
default and also has a bunch of GTK-apps (such as Synaptic).

Well to be hones, probably 80-90% of the Kubuntu users install non-free stuff 
such as flash-plugin and JRE. (Which are included in SimplyMEPIS.) Most are 
also agnostic about GTK stuff, at least installing GIMP. But I understand 
that some may want the option of keeping their system clean of non KDE stuff 
or non-free stuff, but allowing such an option without making it unconvinient 
to install the commonly wanted non-free and/or GTK-stuff should be enough.

Are there any other major reasons for SimplyMEPIS and Kubuntu to remain 
separate?

  cheers, Simon


On Wednesday 12 April 2006 02:41, Didier Raboud wrote:
> Le Mercredi 12 Avril 2006 00:54, Simon Rönnqvist a écrit :
> >   Hi!
> >
> > I've been bothered with the bugginess of Kubuntu and from what I've read
> > it's caused many people to swich to SimplyMEPIS. (Haven't tried it much
> > myself, so I can't tell wether it's more stable or not... but I guess it
> > is.)
> >
> > Well anyways, now it seems like SimplyMEPIS is going to be Ubuntu based
> > (instead of Debian-based) it just occured to me that this may be a time
> > when both projects could benefit from more organised cooperation. Maybe
> > even eventually merging the two into one, I don't know.
> >
> > Any thoughts on this?
> >
> > Check this out: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03351
> >
> > cheers, Simon
>
> Hi.
>
> I think this can be reported to another question :
>
> "Why did Mark Shuttleworth start a new distro an did not contribute
> directly to Debian ?"
>
> I fear it is the natural way of the distribution's ecosystem. Gnoppix is
> based on Knoppix, itself being based on Debian (this is bad example, I
> now). Everybody works on lightly different goals, but everybody releases
> new work, bug fixes, translations to upstream or in GPL. Everybody works
> for its own purpose, but in everybody's advantage.
>
> Maybe SimplyMepis should contribute to Kubuntu, maybe Kubuntu should be
> SimplyMEPIS, or the inverse. Maybe Debian should be Ubuntu, or inverse.
>
> But Ubuntu is Ubuntu, Mandrake is no more RedHat and we have a great bunch
> of different distros, each one serving a lightly different purpose, but all
> being working for us to have free and libre software.
>
> So maybe SimplyMEPIS should work with Kubuntu, or inversly, but I think
> that in every case, the work and energy will come back at a time or
> another. Thq answer, finally does not have a so big importance. We don't
> make money from Kubuntu, so as long as Kubuntu will be fine for me, I will
> use it, when another will be better *for me*, I will probably change, but
> kernel will have grown, software will have been better. Linux goes his
> path.
>
> So. Sorry for being so FSF-GNU-GPL-FLOSS idealist, but I really think that
> question will be the same for a long long time, as a perfect distro for one
> can not be perfect for another one.
>
> So, have a good night,
>
> Didier
>
> P.S. Sorry for bad english and please assign misunderstanding to bad
> english.