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The developers behind the popular open-source distribution of MEPIS Linux are expanding its reach beyond the Linux fan base to the business world with a new business desktop, server, and its first channel and support partner, Technalign Inc.
In June, Morgantown, W.Va.-based MEPIS LLC, a commercial spin-off of the volunteer organization that developed MEPIS, will be releasing SimplyServer, an operating system designed to enable SOHO (small office and home office) users to set up a small server with the same ease as the popular SimplyMEPIS Linux distribution.
The company also plans to release two business products in June: BusMEPIS Desktop and BusMEPIS Server.
Later, MEPIS will be porting its Linux operating system to Advanced Micro Devices Inc.s Athlon 64, PPC (PowerPC) and the IBM S390 mainframe platforms.
The first product from MEPIS.com was a commercial version of the open-source MEPIS Linux, with some support added to make it into a more packaged product called SimplyMEPIS.
MEPIS Linux itself has quite a following. During the last three months, it has been the third most popular desktop Linux on DistroWatch, a site devoted to making it easy to download all Linux distributions.
This makes SimplyMEPIS more popular than such well-known Linuxes as Red Hat Inc.s Fedora and Novell Inc.s SuSE Linux.