Mepis is a great distro. And you're correct. It does have a very helpful support community. A few years ago I experimented with Mepis. I was definitely impressed with the helpful folks over at the Mepis forums. :)

In addition to the Forum, there is excellent community participation in other important areas.

• A complete and up-to-date User's Manual is available off the desktop

• There is a very active Community website

• A Packaging Team makes upgrades and new software available to keep applications on the cutting edge over the stable Debian base

Have to admit: I am a great fan of this distro for everyday work (I run my whole office on it) and play!

Yeah, Jerry Bond WOULD be enthusiastic about SimplyMEPIS - he is one of the primary community contributors when it comes to coordinating the documentation, and he is an outstanding example of what makes the MEPIS community work so well!

I participate there, too, but not with anywhere near the regularity or responsibility that Jerry so freely gives.

Every SimplyMEPIS release is excellent. It is rare when even a test build fails to run well. Personally, I have been a MEPIS user dating back to May 2003 when I found the first public release that Warren Woodford made available.

I am also a great fan of one of the lightweight community versions, antiX, and I try to help test and promote both SimplyMEPIS and antiX. If you need a lightweight distribution with good hardware detection and configuration, antiX is awesome. SimplyMEPIS is great in a similar way as a simple, very stable desktop system. These are two of my favorite distributions.