The third beta of of SimplyMEPIS 8.0 has been released for 32 and 64 bit processors. It is available in the testing directory at MEPIS download sites as SimplyMEPIS-CD_7.9.90-beta_32.iso and SimplyMEPIS-CD_7.9.90-beta_64.iso.

Testing and debugging of minor issues continues. The only major change for this release is a switch to the recently released 2.6.27 kernel. Warren Woodford of MEPIS explains this unexpected move, "In general, the 2.6.26 kernel was working well, but we knew of a couple of problems. The Intel e01000 series drivers needed to be updated and aufs seemed to be a bit unstable. In 2.6.27 the Intel and kernel teams have addressed several Intel driver issues and, in my personal experience, aufs seems to be stable again. As a bonus, 2.6.27 enhances support for IPv6, which we think will become more and more important during the lifecycle of the 8.0 release. Plus, Adrian Bunk at kernel.org has announced that the 2.6.27 kernel will get long term support."

ISO images of new MEPIS beta releases are published to the 'testing' subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber's Site and at MEPIS public mirrors. To support the ongoing development of MEPIS, new users are encouraged go to the MEPIS store at http://www.mepis.org and become MEPIS subscribers.