6. To err is human... to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural. - Murphy's Laws of Computing

SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3 - Comments

Saturday 18th February 2006

Categories: Reviews, GNU/Linux, FLOSS

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6. Submitted by Mike, free-bees.co.uk, Sunday 19th February 2006

In response to #5:

My point about GRUB was that I couldn't just copy and paste part of the contents from my Debian menu.lst into MEPIS' menu.lst - doing this meant that any Debian option would cause me just to return back to the GRUB menu. This is contrary to other distributions, such as Fedora, where I could just paste the contents of Debian's menu.lst without any problems.

With regards to resolution... please see above.

As for updates... I commented on the fact that MEPIS uses Apt, just like Debian. I didn't feel that Kpackage was really that much simpler than Synaptic. For example, does the 'average user' really need the option to install ipw2100-modules-2.6.15-1-686-smp? For the vast majority of users, a simpler interface, with less choices that make more sense might be more helpful. I found Ubuntu to be very good in this respect - gnome-app-install is what I mean. Of course, Synaptic should still be kept as well.

7. Submitted by Anonymous, Sunday 19th February 2006

On the password issue, I have found that Mepis default on passwords is a maximum of 6 characters. Which in my mind is grossly inadequate.

8. Submitted by Mike, free-bees.co.uk, Sunday 19th February 2006

In response to #7:

After trying a bit more, it seems that MEPIS only checks the first eight characters - my question is: why?

9. Submitted by P. Woods, Sunday 19th February 2006

Simple passwords are accepted by other distros. Mandrake and 1 other I tried recently (sorry can't recall which, might be Suse) comment on it but take it anyway.

Try it. Causes confusion, because you think it has rejected the change, but it hasn't. It just expects you to repeat the same (poor) pass to confirm.

Mandrake has a control to allow root to set the
minimum standard of pass it will accept. I think it might have a switch to set reject or just give a snide remark. Perhaps Mepis has this too.

PW

10. Submitted by Mike, free-bees.co.uk, Sunday 19th February 2006

In response to #9:

Unfortunately, I don't have any other distributions installed to try this on, but I will certainly test this on any distribution I try (assuming I remember!) - thanks for the warning.