Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC3 released

AdamWill writes "Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC3 "Beijing" is now available. Featuring the most comprehensive support for 3D desktop technologies, the latest versions of KDE, GNOME, Mozilla Firefox and others, a beautiful new theme and enhancements and refinements to the comprehensive suite of Mandriva configuration utilities, Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring is the best Mandriva Linux release yet. Beijing features fixes to all major bugs in previous betas and release candidates, the final version of GNOME 2.18, and the full feature set intended for the final release. Both traditional installer-based Free editions and combined live / install CD One editions are available. Beijing is available from all Mandriva mirror sites in the /devel/iso/2007.1 directory. Please consult the release notes for more information."

Comments

Re:Whats this?

[jlarocco]

Is this new?

Yes. It's the latest release candidate, released a few days ago.

Is it based on Ubuntu?

No, it's Mandrake, which pre-dates Ubuntu. The name was changed from Mandrake to Mandriva after MandrakeSoft went bankrupt and merged with Connectiva in 2005.

See here for more information.

Is 3D support actually good this time?

[CastrTroy]

Is 3D desktop support actually good this time? Although it my be because i'm running with an ATI video card, I found that the 3D desktop support was terrible in the original Mandriva 2007. Frequent crashes where a major problem. I don't really need a 3D desktop, so I turned it off, but it sure would be nice to have a 3D desktop that works.

Re:Is 3D support actually good this time?

[AdamWill]

Well, Compiz and Beryl have progressed since 2007 came out, so all those improvements are included. You may find it more stable this time. We just package up the latest available Compiz and Beryl and make sure drak3d sets them up properly; beyond that we're at the mercy of the code quality of the upstream projects :)

Re:I may have it at home, I downloaded Mandriva Fr

[AdamWill]

That was our last stable release. It's good too. :) This is the soon-to-be-released new release, 2007 Spring (AKA 2007.1).

Yay for Mandriva

[Xtravar]

I think this has to be said, and I don't have a better place to say it - Mandriva is the best distro I have used. It may possibly be the only distribution of Linux that a power user can install and enjoy without worrying about low-level details and configuration.

I used Mandrake 7.0 - 9.0 on an old server at home for various Linux hackery. When I saw Mandrake 9.0, I said to myself, "I am switching my desktop to Linux at 10.0," and that's what I did, and I haven't looked back.

Mandriva lets you run Gnome or KDE right out of the box. Its configuration utilities let you do almost anything with ease. It may have stability issues once in awhile if you run out of their development 'cooker' branch, but it's gotten a ton better in the past few years.

With the PLF repository, you get all of the 'banned' functionality that's not packaged with Mandriva (windows codecs, etc).

Some user-friendly distributions are severely limited when you want to go beyond the basics. They don't have up-to-date development RPMs or don't have utilities that support advanced configuration.

If only Mandriva weren't so expensive I might actually get the commercial version. Honestly, the improvements from version to version have been astounding.