I have been looking forward to the release of SimplyMepis 8.5 for at least six months. I used SimplyMepis 8.0 the first half of last year with its KDE 3.5 desktop and was very content. I was late to the KDE 4 bandwagon, but I became interested last summer when reports pegged it as stable and usable. Reports were already circulating that the next release of Mepis would have KDE 4 as the desktop. It was a long hard wait, but the opportunity finally arrived on March 30 with the release of SimplyMepis 8.5.