A few minutes ago, Mandriva has announced the first release candidate version of Mandriva 2009, which brings a greatly improved package management tool, with automatic mirror selection and repository configuration. Dubbed camelopard, this first RC replaces the old madwifi wireless driver with the brand new ath5k, for all Atheros cards, and brings further improvements to the Ora theme. The development cycle of Mandriva 2009 will continue with the second release candidate in late September, and will conclude with the final release in early October. With the 2009 edition, Mandriva Linux will try to compete with the current release of openSUSE 11.0 and the upcoming Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), and even to "steal" some of their devoted users. The following features could be part of Mandriva 2009, scheduled for release on October 9, 2008:

· Linux kernel 2.6.27
· GCC 4.3
· GNOME 2.24
· KDE 4.1
· Firefox 3.0
· OpenOffice.org 3.0
· revamped installer
· improved boot speed
· improved DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) management
· improved language selection
· implementation of the PolicyKit and PackageKit technologies
· improvements to the Mandriva Windows Migration and Parental Control utilities
· Live Upgrade (same as Ubuntu's update-manager tool)
· initscript improvements
· Splashy will replace the actual boot splash
· lots of desktop improvements

There are also some rumors that X.org 7.4 and GRUB2 will be included in Mandriva 2009.

We've just installed this release candidate (the 3 CDs edition) and here is the screenshot tour for Mandriva 2009 RC1 with the brand new KDE 4.1.1 desktop environment:




Mandriva 2009 Release Schedule:

June 25, 2008 - Alpha 1 release
July 10, 2008 - Alpha 2 release
July 29, 2008 - Beta 1 release
August 20, 2008 - Beta 2 release
September 4, 2008 - Release Candidate 1
September 23, 2008 - Release Candidate 2
October 2, 2008 - Official Internal release
October 9, 2008 - Official Public release of Mandriva 2009

Mandriva 2009 will be delivered, as usual, on 100% FREE edition CDs and DVDs for 32bit and 64bit platforms, and the One edition, with KDE4 and GNOME Live CDs.

Download Mandriva 2009 RC1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only. Please test it and report bugs to the Mandriva Bug Tracker.

Also, you can download the stable release, Mandriva 2008.1, right now from Softpedia.