14 DAY TRIAL // Mandriva 2008.1 or Spring, one of the most awaited Linux distributions of this year, was launched today. It comes in two free-of-charge editions, One and Free, and a commercial version, Powerpack. The launch marks ten years of Mandriva Linux.
In this release, the Mandriva developers decided to move to RedHat/Suse fork of RPM for better compatibility between distributions and ease of maintenance. Thanks to the GeoIP technology, the repository configuration is done transparently. Also, Mandriva will now use the Fedora version of mkinitrd, because this is much easier to maintain.
PulseAudio is the default sound server for Mandriva 2008.1, because it simplifies the usage of sound peripherals easier and efficiently. Speaking of multimedia and audio, you will easily install multimedia codecs thanks to the Codeina framework, which allows Mandriva users to play videos and songs in formats for which a codec is not available in the default installation.
If you are a KDE fan, you should know that KDE3 (3.5.9) will remain the default KDE version, because KDE4 (4.0.3) is still considered a young desktop environment. The graphical theme contains a time-based background feature, that changes the background color gradually, depending on the time of the day. In case you like GNOME, you will get GNOME 2.22, the latest version of the popular desktop environment. As a bonus, you can have XFCE 4.4.2 installed very simply, by enabling the /contrib repository and installing the task-xfce package.
For office tasks, you have OpenOffice 2.4, sporting improved desktop and packaging integration and all the components of OpenOffice are split into several packages. You will enjoy OpenOffice's features like its beautiful OpenGL-based 3D transitions, multilanguage support, ability to show bars side by side and much more.
The Linux kernel used is 2.6.24.4, offering the best out-of-the-box hardware support in a Mandriva Linux release. Compiz Fusion 0.7.2 will do the 3D rendering work on your desktop, a version that comes with very important bugfixes, native KDE 4 window decorator, session management support and standards compliance improvements.
If you own an Asus Eee PC and you want to install Mandriva on it, you should know that this is now possible, because Mandriva 2008.1 supports all the Eee's hardware, without any configuration required. All of the configuration tools and applications have been modified to 'get along' with the low resolution screen of the Eee PC.
Mandriva 2008 Spring also brings easy synchronization with Windows Mobile 5 / 6 and other devices. You can now synchronize Windows Mobile 5 and 6, Blackberry and many Nokia devices with the help of KDE or GNOME tools in a simple and easy manner.
Some other applications included in Mandriva 2008 Spring are VirtualBox, one of the best virtualization solutions available at this moment, the Shorewall (also know as Shoreline) firewall - a high-level tool for configuring Netfilter - and Abiword 2.6, which brings many new features and improvements, such as experimental collaboration support and experimental OpenDocument and OOXML support.
Download Mandriva Linux 2008.1 right now from Softpedia. Download Mandriva Linux One 2008.1 right now from Softpedia.
Here are some more screenshots of Mandriva Linux 2008.1:
