I’m pleased to report that one of my favorite desktop Linux distributions, MEPIS, is returning. The beta of the next version, MEPIS 8, is now available.

Warren Woodford, MEPIS‘ designer, has been unable to devote much time to his Linux distribution since late last year because, as Woodford put it at the time, “MEPIS was slowed down, because I finally had to reenter the workforce as a consultant in order to pay the bills. I can net more in two weeks of consulting, then in a year with MEPIS.”

Now, Woodford has time to devote to MEPIS again so he’s announced MEPIS 7.9.70-beta. You can ISO images in the ‘testing’ subdirectory at the MEPIS Subscriber’s Site and at the MEPIS public mirrors..

This new beta, like MEPIS 7, is based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. Woodford decided to switch to Debian in the summer of 2007. Specifically, MEPIS 8 is being built on the forthcoming Debian 5, Lenny, release (http://practical-tech.com/operating-system/what-to-expect-in-debian-5-lenny/).

This means that the new MEPIS will be using the 2.6.25.2 Linux kernel. It will also include X.org 7.3, KDE 3.5.9, OpenOffice3.0, Firefox 3.0.1, Sun Java 6.0, Amarok 1.4.10, mplayer 1.0.rc2, libglib2.0 2.16.4, libgtk2.0 2.12.11, and QT 4.4.0.

If you’re wondering where KDE 4.1 is, Woodford is not including it. Or, at least he’s not incorporating it at this time. Woodford explained, “I spent a whole month trying to bypass the shortcomings of KDE 4.0. I got close, but I had to back off for now.”