There's not a great deal to distinguish Linux distributions these days, since they're all composed of (basically) the same components. All a distro has to really differentiate itself, for the average user, is a few management tools and the timeliness of the software — and, of course, the community that forms around the distro. SimplyMEPIS does have a friendly, and helpful, community.

MEPIS is based on Ubuntu and uses KDE as its default desktop-environment, but be not fooled that this is just another Kubuntu: MEPIS also features unique tools for specific administrative tasks not seen anywhere else. For instance, the MEPIS User Assistant doesn’t just create users, but also sets up file-sharing for the given users and the MEPIS X-Windows Assistant doesn’t just change resolution of the monitor, but also installs commercial nVidia/ATI-drivers and enables multi-monitor support and so on from an easy-to-use user interface.

MEPIS lacks behind in only a few cases, but that is in some rather crucial ones. Firstly, the website is hard to navigate through, as important parts, such as documentation, has been given very odd names – this is not the way to attract new users! That said, the documentation-wiki is very good.