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."

Comments

Re:News?

[Xtravar]

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!!!

Re:What is Mandriva's market anymore, anyways?

[f2x]

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.