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Mandriva Linux 2009 Alpha 2 Released
AdamWill writes "The Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2, 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. The kernel has also been updated to release 2.6.26rc7. Another feature of interest to many users will be the addition of orphan package tracking (and optional automatic removal) to the urpmi package manager. Of course, many applications have been updated (although the default version of Mozilla Firefox is still currently 2.0.x), and most of the distribution has been rebuilt with a new GCC version, 4.3. Mandriva warns that this is a true alpha, likely to contain many bugs related to the new version of KDE. Please install it only in a test environment, and especially do not use it as an upgrade from any earlier Mandriva Linux release."
The main point is configuration utilities. Of the other mainstream distros, only SUSE's YaST has anything like the range of the Mandriva Control Center, but it doesn't take kindly to you altering the files it controls manually (it tends to just reset them, completely overwriting your manual modifications). MDV doesn't do this. That was what the OP meant with that point. Ubuntu and Fedora (and derivatives) have nothing like MCC / YaST.
And, yes, of course we're relevant. We're probably the fourth biggest distribution overall (behind Ubuntu, SUSE and Fedora / RH). We're the largest remaining independent commercial desktop Linux distributor (excepting Canonical, which is not really a conventional company but basically entirely funded out of Mr. Shuttleworth's pocket) - if you want a company that exists by providing Linux distributions to end-users (and doesn't do it as a loss leader or a development spin off), Mandriva is basically it. And 2008 Spring got probably the best overall reviews out of the crop released at the same time, as noted by Distrowatch this week.
We do actually have a reasonably large enterprise business, mainly in Europe (and particularly France, obviously). We also have several significant OEM deals, including a pre-load deal with one of the largest Brazilian PC manufacturers (several thousand PCs are shipped pre-loaded with Mandriva in Brazil every month). We also have an involvement with Intel's Classmate PC program, we're involved in a large project in Angola to basically revamp its entire national IT structure, and there's a netbook / mini-laptop / whatever you call them coming out with Mandriva pre-loaded later this year - the Gdium (http://www.gdium.com). But yeah, we still have a significant (and growing) user base among normal every day Linux users. Sales of the Powerpack and Flash are pretty strong, and there's many times more people using the free editions.
When you find a package with an error like that, please report it on the forums or (preferably) to Bugzilla - it'll help in getting it fixed. It does happen sometimes, mostly to contrib packages when the package gets rotten (because a maintainer leaves or stops maintaining a package for some reason). For 2009 there should be no such problems within the /main repository, we are working on ensuring that at present.