Ubuntu and Kubuntu vs. Mepis

[Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO]

 The article that got me thinking about this is here:
http://www.mepis.org/node/9454
They are even raising the SimplyMepis version to 6.0 to match the Ubuntu
release number.   This was probably a natural progression from the DCC
Alliance joining.  http://www.dccalliance.org/

More below.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tom Bruno 
>Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 8:17 AM

>
>Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO wrote:
>> Who in our group is actually using these distros?   I'm interested in
>> the ease of updating and stability after doing so compared to Mepis, 
>> HDD installed Knoppix and regular Debian or any other 
>Debian-based distro.
>>
>> I've tried tons of LiveCDs, used Mepis quite a bit and never had 
>> success with plain old Debian installing as a desktop.  I like Mepis 
>> out of the box, though like any distro you find little bits 
>that don't 
>> work or you don't like.  Mepis is switching to the Ubuntu 
>repositories with the next release, in order to get more stable
updates.
>>   
>being no difference between ubuntu and kubuntu at all except 
>the default install. ( you can even have both installed even) 
>ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu-desktop packages.
>
>I've been using dapper drake since about the mid of Feb.. it is
amazing.
>Love it. Hardware just works, stuff just works, and its sweet. 
>I use Kubuntu, but I login to the Ubuntu gnome stuff just to 
>see how it is going with development. I've had no stability 
>problems at all, even in this beta stage. Plus, with k/ubuntu 
>you get a lot of software that is used but "not included" in 
>Debian when you enable universe and multiverse repo's as well 
>as backports.

What are universe and multiverse repos?  Does K/Ubuntu use apt-pinning?
Does this interfere or limit what packages you install to them?  I may
have run into a similar problem that Jhutchins had with his Gentoo and
the Wacom crap the other day.  I try to remove some package from Mepis
that I will never use.  E.g. Gtkpod for ipod support, and a whole crap
load of stuff is going to be removed by apt-get.  Makes it hard to gain
space my removing what you don't need.  Or do a apt-get update and
upgrade and a whole slew of stuff stops working right.