For both KDE and GNOME editions

Mar 16, 2009 18:21 GMT  ·  By

On March 10th, Mandriva announced the immediate availability of Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC1. Though a bit late, we thought it would be nice to please some of our readers and offer them a visual tour of this first release candidate. And we promise that from now on we will keep you updated with screenshots for all Mandriva releases, so stay tuned!

What's new in Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC1? Well, the most important feature of this release is draksnapshot a.k.a. the brand new system restore functionality. Another cool addition is the HDT (Hardware Detection Tool) that allows users to get a complete description of the hardware without needing to install the operating system to the hard drive.

In Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC1, the developers offer a first glance at the 2009 Spring artwork with quite a few wallpapers to choose from. Furthermore, users now have the ability to add a special ISO to a USB drive and from there install it on netbooks or other devices that lack an optical drive.

Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC1, which boots with either the GNOME 2.26 RC or the KDE 4.2.1 desktop environments, is built on top of Linux kernel 2.6.29 RC6. Let's have a look now at some of the packages that were updated in this release:

· X.org server 1.6.0 · Qt Creator 1.0 · Qt 4.5.0 · OpenOffice.Org 3.0.1 · GIMP 2.6.5 · Amarok 2.0.2

The installer was also improved and a new interactive firewall was added. A Live CD, a Live DVD for the 32-bit or 64-bit architecture and a Dual CD providing support for both, are available for download (see below for links). Without further ado, here is the screenshot tour showing off both desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) in Mandriva 2009.1 RC1. Enjoy!

Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC1 with KDE 4.2.1
Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC1 with GNOME 2.26 RC

Mandriva Linux 2009.1 Release Schedule:

December 23rd, 2008 - Alpha 1 release January 19th, 2009 - Alpha 2 release February 12th, 2009 - Beta release March 10th, 2009 - Release Candidate 1 March 31st, 2009 - Release Candidate 2 April 29th, 2009 - Final release

Download Mandriva 2009.1 RC1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is an unstable release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only. Please report bugs to the Mandriva Bug Tracker.

Photo Gallery (31 Images)

Mandriva 2009.1 RC1
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