14 DAY TRIAL // The Mandriva developers woke up early during the week-end and delivered the Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Release Candidate 1 to the awaiting supporters of this operating system. There are a lot of versions to choose from: the well-known Mandriva One, both with GNOME and KDE, the Free edition that is made exclusively from open-source software, a dual Arch CD ISO that has both 32-bit and 64-bit support, and some VirtualBox images for those who just want a quick test in a virtual machine.
This release candidate fixes many bugs that were present in Mandriva 2010 Beta, especially the desktop environment-related ones and the problems with the distribution-specific network tools. You will also find the 2.6.31 stable Linux kernel. Although some would expect things to stabilize as the distribution is heading towards a final release, RC1 also contains some new KDE functionality, as Anne Nicolas tells us in the release announcement: "This RC1 release comes also with new integration of Nepomuk in KDE. This experimental functionality helps you to add notes on all your files, add some annotations and labels. You are then able to manage and look for your personal data in term of final objective."
Some of the major features integrated in Mandriva Linux 2010.0 RC1 are the Plymouth boot splash, giving users a smooth transition between the boot phase and the desktop environment, Amarok 2.2 Beta 2, the latest unstable GNOME release, version 2.27.90, and Xfce 4.6.1 for those who prefer a more lightweight desktop environment.
This release candidate isn't free of problems, so you are advised to perform only standalone installations, because trying to upgrade a previous Mandriva distribution to 2010 RC1 will render the desktop unusable.
Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Release Schedule:
June 19th, 2009 - Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Alpha 1
July 31st, 2009 - Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Alpha 2
August 22th, 2009 - Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Beta
September 19th, 2009 - Mandriva Linux 2010.0 RC1
October 8th, 2009 - Mandriva Linux 2010.0 RC2
November 3rd, 2009 - Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Final release
Download Mandriva 2010.0 Alpha 1 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 report bugs to the Mandriva Bug Tracker.