Delayed 5 days, the first alpha version of Mandriva Linux 2009.1 (a.k.a. Spring) was announced on December 23rd on the official Mandriva blog. Mandriva 2009.1 Alpha 1 brings the current development versions of the KDE, GNOME and Xfce desktop environments, a Linux kernel based on the eight release candidate of 2.6.28 and a few other bleeding-edge technologies.

The development cycle of Mandriva 2009.1 will continue with two beta releases in January and February 2009 and two release candidates in March, and it will conclude with the official public release in the middle of April 2009. Once again, with the Spring edition, Mandriva Linux 2009 will try to compete with the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), and even to "steal" some of its devoted users.

"The alpha is available only in the DVD Free edition with a traditional installer and no proprietary applications; future pre-releases will add the live CD One edition with proprietary drivers. Please help test this first pre-release and report bugs to Mandriva." - said the Mandriva developers in the official release announcement.

Highlights of Mandriva Linux 2009.1 Alpha 1:

· Linux kernel 2.6.28 RC8
· KDE 4.2 Beta 2
· GNOME 2.25.2
· Xfce 4.6 Beta 2
· X.org server 1.5
· Tcl/Tk 8.6

Mandriva Linux 2009.1 Release Schedule:

December 23rd, 2008 - Alpha release
January 16th, 2009 - Beta 1 release
February 9th, 2009 - Beta 2 release
March 3rd, 2009 - Release Candidate 1
March 24th, 2009 - Release Candidate 2
April 16th, 2009 - Final release

Mandriva 2009.1 (Spring Edition) will be delivered, as usual, on 100% FREE edition CDs and DVDs for 32bit and 64bit platforms, and the One edition, with KDE 4.2 and GNOME 2.26 Live CDs.

Download Mandriva 2009.1 Alpha 1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is an alpha release and it should not be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only. Please report bugs to the Mandriva Bug Tracker.