Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris Archive

Howsoftwareisbuilt.com posted up an interview with Adam Williamson, Mandriva community manager and developer, covering some information on Mandriva development and also more general discussion on the distribution industry. I'd like to take the opportunity here to wish Adam, OSNews reader, the best of luck in finding a new job. Adam told us he'll be leaving Mandriva at the end of December. Please note that the above interview was conducted before this news was out.

Thanks to the Mandriva Xfce volunteer development team, a community Xfce One edition of Mandriva Linux 2009 is now available for download from all official Mandriva mirrors. A list of download locations can be found on the Wiki page. This release gives you all the benefits of Mandriva Linux 2009 along with a fast and stable Xfce desktop.

Mandriva has done quite a lot of work on optimizing boot speed for its latest release, Mandriva Linux 2009. Frederic Crozat (head of the French engineering team) has written a blog post summarizing Mandriva's past work on this front, and the tweaks and improvements made for 2009. It shows that close analysis of inefficiencies in boot, and fixing 'small' bugs, can result in gains as large or larger than 'big picture' items like new initialization systems.

Jack Wallen of TechRepublic tried the Mandriva 2008 Spring and his verdict is "Mandriva Spring 2008 Live CD better than most other distributions fully installed." He claims that "This is, without a doubt, the finest release of any Linux distribution I have ever experienced in my 10+ years of using Linux."

The How Software is Built blog secured an interview with Helio Chissini de Castro, one of the KDE developers employed by Linux distributor Mandriva. Helio talks about Mandriva, about KDE 4, and about the state of open source software in Brazil, where he is based.

Mandriva and Precedent Technologies (PTech) are pleased to announce a new partnership, working together on the release in September in the United States of a new low-cost desktop - the TechSurfer - with Intel Atom CPUs and Mandriva Linux preinstalled. TechSurfer is a web-centric computing platform that is designed for customers who mostly surf the web; download music; and utilize VOIP services, such as Skype. The TechSurfer platform is also suitable for light desktop applications. TechSurfer is powered by the Intel Atom processor. The Atom processor was designed especially for web-centric computers. TechSurfer prices starts at $399.99 with Mandriva Linux pre-installed: Microsoft Windows will cost an extra $100. The system will come with a three-year manufacturer's warranty. Find out more in the press release.
Editor's note: Looks like Mandriva is taking full-advantage of the Low-cost hardware arena. First the Intel's ClassmatePC then the GDium and now PTech.

Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2 was released today, marking the first public pre-release of the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2009. This alpha introduces several significant changes, most obviously the inclusion of KDE 4 - 4.1 beta 2, specifically - as the default version of KDE, and the latest development version of GNOME, 2.23.4.

Mandriva has released the planned schedule and technical specifications for its next release, Mandriva Linux 2009. These can be found on the Mandriva Wiki. The schedule calls for a first alpha release on June 25th, with the final release set for early October. Planned features include KDE 4, Firefox 3, OpenOffice.org 3, a new design for the installer, a live distribution upgrade mode for MandrivaUpdate, and improvements to many of the Mandriva tools. Take a look and see what you may find on your system when the final Mandriva Linux 2009 release is available.

Linuxseekers reviews Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, and concludes: "In conclusion, there is no doubt that Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is a great release. Great artwork! The hardware support for this release has been excellent with exception of the support for the two of my USB-based TV tuners (Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 900 and the less well-known Compro type)."

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring has been released. This new release brings features like full support for the Asus Eee, easy synchronization with Windows Mobile 5 and later, Blackberry, and Nokia devices, a new parental control utility, the Elisa multimedia centrer, Codeina for easy installation of necessary media codecs, and PulseAudio by default. Software updates include KDE 3.5.9 (with 4.0.2 available from the official repositories), GNOME 2.22, OpenOffice.org 2.4, Linux kernel 2.6.24.4, X.org 7.3, and Compiz 0.7. You can download the One (live/install CD) or Free (traditional installer, 100% free/open source software) editions of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring right here. BitTorrent download links can be found here. The main 2008 Spring page on the Mandriva Wiki has more information.

As the latest Mandriva release, 2008 Spring, reaches release candidate stage, the What's Coming in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring page on the Mandriva Wiki is available, providing a summary of all the major new features arriving in the forthcoming release, along with screenshots. New versions of KDE 3, KDE 4, GNOME and XFCE, Asus Eee PC compatibility, PulseAudio, improvements to the Mandriva configuration tools and some new applications all make the list.

The fourth pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is here. This pre-release includes the all-new artwork for the 2008 Spring release, further improvements to the Mandriva software management tools, WPA-EAP support in the network configuration tools, KDE 3.5.9 and available 4.0.1, some new default applications in KDE and GNOME, and the latest pre-release of OpenOffice.org 2.4. See here for download information. And URPMI got support for rpm5.

The third pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring has been released. This pre-release brings available KDE 4.0.0 final (in the repositories, not on the discs), a new XML-based package metainformation system, out-of-the-box support for multimedia keys on many common keyboards, new NVIDIA and ATI drivers, kernel 2.6.24 RC8 (with ALSA 1.0.16 RC1), and more. See here for download information. There are screenshots too.

The second pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is here. This pre-release brings a near-final snapshot of KDE 4.0 (final 4.0 packages are currently being uploaded to the Cooker repositories), new NVIDIA and ATI drivers, the chance to test the experimental Nouveau open source driver for NVIDIA cards, kernel 2.6.24rc7, and more. See here for download information.