THE FAMILY of distributions derived from Mandrake (originally the 'Red Hat camp') are still contenders on the desktop, challenging the 'Debian camp' championed by Ubuntu and its derivatives (and other Debian derivatives like SteamOS). According to Mageia people who spoke to us last night, Mageia 4 is scheduled to be released in FOSDEM next week. There is already a release candidate [1,2] and a preview [3]. Mandriva, despite losing Charles-H. Schulz [4,5], is said to have just found an expansion route [6] and PCLinuxOS (a popular Mandriva/Mandrake derivative) is receiving good reviews [7] and releasing new magazines [8].
The release candidate spin of the upcoming Mageia 4 Linux distribution from the Mandriva/Mandrake lineage is now available for testing.
Mageia, a GNU/Linux-based free operating system that started its life as a fork of Mandriva Linux and that is supported by a nonprofit organization of elected contributors, is now at version 4 RC.
Today's stroll around the Linuxhood proved quite interesting as usual. First up are reviews of two distributions that get few reviews, so those are quite welcome. Debian developers get a free subscription to Steam if they want. And someone nicked Zoltan gives a nice overview of Mageia and its place in the Linux distro landscape. Today's bonus is Matt Asay's assertion that the Linux desktop doesn't matter anymore.
Mandriva S.A. snagged the expertise of Charles-H. Schulz in May 2012 to help organize and basically sweep up after the restructuring of early 2012. Schulz, whose first job was with MandrakeSoft, left Mandriva S.A at the beginning of the year and wishes "success and good luck" to OpenMandriva.
The beginnings of the OpenMandriva project were rough. The very rationale for the existence of OpenMandriva were not overly clear to many people. After all, the Mageia project was already booming and the justification for such a project that was aiming at building upon the Mandriva Linux legacy was weak. On top of this, the team behind the project was small, and the mission was overwhelming: to continue, as a community, the development of the linux distribution formerly known as Mandriva Linux. I will not really go into details as to how the project evolved, but I am proud to have contributed in a significant way to build the home for this project, namely an independent French NGO (the OpenMandriva Association) and to have helped the community with establishing its governance and some of its sound principles and processes. But the question remains: why does the OpenMandriva Project matter? Why should we care?
Instead of being just a supplier of GNU/Linux, Mandriva has added plenty of software and services all its own aimed at businesses. They must even have salesmen… In their enthusiasm they wrote, “In 2006, hundred of millions of personal computers pre-installed with Linux were shipped, particularly to South America, East Europe, Russia, North Africa and India. Mandriva also participates in thematic projects with Intel, such as the Classmate PC.” With optimism/ambition like that they could go far. We await the next chapter…
This quarterly release from PCLinuxOS delivers the latest from KDE, LXDE, and MATE. Or you can try the famous PCLinuxOS Full Monty ISO which includes most/or all of the desktops listed above. I am slightly behind on my KDE updates so I will be reviewing PCLinuxOS 2013.12 KDE. For those that are wondering, this distribution is available in 32 or 64 bit architecture.
Download the PDF (10.7 MB) http://pclosmag.com/download.php?f=2014-01.pdf
Download the EPUB Version (9.7 MB) http://pclosmag.com/download.php?f=201401epub.epub
Download the MOBI Version (10.0 MB) http://pclosmag.com/download.php?f=201401mobi.mobi
Visit the HTML Version http://pclosmag.com/html/enter2014.html