Warren Woodford of MEPIS has built KDE4-Beta1 Live DVDs to verify the compatibility of KDE 4 with SimplyMEPIS 7.x. The 32 and 64 bit DVD isos are available from the testing directory of the MEPIS subscriber site and the MEPIS public mirrors.

Warren said "I decided to share my KDE 4 Beta 1 isos, so others could take a first look at KDE 4 and also to demonstrate that I'm serious about the commitment that MEPIS 7.x will be incrementally upgradable. We plan to do another KDE 4 integration every few weeks. We expect that KDE 4 will not be final in time for the MEPIS 7.0 release, but by integrating KDE 4 now, we can insure that 7.0 will be "KDE 4 ready."

Both 32 and 64 bit versions are available. They are about 1 GB each and include all of the KDE 4 applications that are working at this time.

KDE 4 Beta 1 is a very early release and is meant for developers, testers, and reviewers. Warren recommends "The release is sluggish, be patient when clicking to launch something. If you look past the rough edges, you will see the beginnings of a world-class desktop experience. If something doesn't work, you could consider reporting a bug at the KDE project, but I would recommend holding off until the next Beta release before submitting a lot of bug reports." For more information about KDE 4.0 Beta 1 see: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.0-beta1.php

Jos Poortvliet of the KDE Project said: "The KDE project is happy to see MEPIS Linux leading the way in bringing the next generation desktop technology to their users. This decision of early adoption of KDE 4 by the MEPIS developers will ensure a premier KDE experience for the users. We hope KDE 4 will be appreciated, and we look forward to the constructive comments from the Mepis community."

The Live DVDs were built using a MEPIS 7.0 Etch core and include the usual MEPIS kernel and hardware compatibility features. Since KDE 4 is functionally different than KDE 3 and also in an early Beta state, a minimal KDE 3 installation remains on the disk to facilitate exploration by the user.

The KDE4 packages were compiled from the Deb-untu developer upstream source. Experimental packages from Debian svn and from Ubuntu universe were tested. Both built and ran, but the ubuntu packages were more functional.

32 and 64 bit ISO images are available in the 'testing' subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber's Site and at the MEPIS public mirrors. For immediate access to new releases, and to support the development of MEPIS, why not go to the MEPIS store and become a MEPIS subscriber? CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, sport shirts, and MEPIS penguins are also available at www.mepis.org/store