Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mandriva Linux 2009 Alpha 2 Released

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the still-needs-some-ironing dept.

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."

4 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. What is Mandriva's market anymore, anyways? by paroneayea · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the day, when I started using Linux, Mandrake (now Mandriva) was a great distribution that helped newbies like me hit the ground running. But now it seems like Ubuntu has gobbled up that market. Afaict, they don't have much of an "enterprise" market, and they don't have much of a "hacker" market... or am I wrong? What market is Mandriva serving these days?

    --
    http://mediagoblin.org/
    1. Re:What is Mandriva's market anymore, anyways? by f2x · · Score: 5, Interesting

      How about the market for people who just want their systems to work out of the box?

      Now I did just have a couple of unexpected meltdowns recently after some 2008.1 updates, but overall, my Mandr(ake|iva) installs have been exceptionally stable compared with my (*)buntu experiences.

      --
      Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
  2. Re:News? by Xtravar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not to start a distro flame war, but...

    How is an alpha release of Mandriva news?

    BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME! Name me another distro that:
      - installs easily and with lots of options
      - has integrated configuration utilities for GUI AND console that don't mind personal hacking of the config files
      - has bleeding edge packages, if you choose
      - doesn't exclude dev packages in pursuit of user friendliness
      - has native packages for nearly every application you'll use

    In other words, they provide a professional, up-to-date Linux environment that is simple enough for newbies, flexible enough for advanced users, and hassle-free for those of us who have no time to waste on configuration and compilation.
    Also, it appears to be a rare example of a major distro that still supports multiple desktop environments out of the box.

    I'm stoked for Mandriva 2009 and I'm glad to know it's coming...

    That said, there's no way in hell I'm installing an alpha of it, so you may have a point. :) But at least I can start prepping my hard disk partitions! WOOO MANDRIVA FTW!!!

    --
    Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
  3. Re:News? by AdamWill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Doesn't have anywhere near MDV's range of configuration utilities, which is what the OP was getting at. Also we'd argue our centralized backports repository system is rather better than Ubuntu's "seventy billion PPA" system, for bleeding edge packages. (Yes, for anyone who didn't get the memo yet, I work for Mandriva).