MEPIS has announced that SimplyMEPIS 8.4.95, the third beta of MEPIS 8.5, is available from MEPIS and public mirrors. The ISO files for 32 and 64 bit processors are SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.95-b3_32.iso and SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.95-b3_64.iso respectively.

SimplyMEPIS 8.x is based on a Debian Stable foundation, but is enhanced with cherry picked updates to important applications. The 8.5 release features a KDE 4.3.4 desktop, while the 8.0 release continues to support KDE 3.5.10.

Warren Woodford reported: "This beta includes kernel 2.6.32.2, which we reconfigured slightly, based on user feedback, so kdenlive works with DV cameras. Kipi-plugins were updated to the new 1.0.0 release. And the beginning defaults for dolphin and the desktop were adjusted to be more 'MEPIS-like.' Konq-plugins were added to the build, to give us additional functionality in the KDE browser and file management."

Warren continued: "For both 8.5 and 8.0; hwdata, hwinfo, and initramfs-tools were updated to improve hardware support. Thanks to the support of the University of Kent, there is a MEPIS package mirror at mirrorservice.org. The 8.5 and 8.0 apt sources.list was modified to point to it by default. This should improve package update speed for many users."