Summary: Mageia 4 is out, PCLinuxOS is promoted at the expense of Ubuntu, and ROSA is being reviewed

As we had noted a week or so in advance, Mageia 4 was released in time for FOSDEM [1] and it received some press coverage [2]. There are galleries of screenshots online [3,4] and also some reviews [5,6]. These are generally very positive and they serve to show that the team did good work.

Other than that, PCLinuxOS received a recommendation [7]. It is said to be better for Windows XP users and judging by my father's experience it is probably true. Windows XP users easily and quickly get accustomed to PCLinuxOS. The similarity in structure and appearance sure helps.

Speaking of another Mandriva derivative, ROSA is being reviewed again [8,9] and it's looking good. Mandriva is now based in Russia and ROSA is a Russian distribution, whereas Mageia is mostly French and PCLinuxOS is developed in the US.

Don't dismiss the Mandriva camp. It may not have a strong brand like Ubuntu's or a development community as vast as Debian's, but it sure is doing well. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. New year, new resolutions and a new Mageia – here’s Mageia 4!

   Right on time, and just in time for the first day of FOSDEM 2014, we have the great pleasure of announcing Mageia 4. We’re still having a grand time doing this together, and we hope you enjoy this release as much as we’ve enjoyed making it. And if you’re at FOSDEM, come and help us celebrate!





2. Mageia 4 Linux Desktop Distro Delivers Improved Performance, Features





3. Mageia 4 GNOME Quick Screenshot Tour

   Default desktop of Mageia 4 GNOME has some flowery ornaments on the deep-blue background. As usual in GNOME, there is no dedicated menu, but there is an all-screen search tool. You may notice that there is no network indicator on the panel.





4. Mageia 4





5. Mageia 4.0, hands-on: Another excellent release

   
   
   A few years ago (September 2010 to be exact), when things got really crazy with the Mandriva distribution, some of the core developers and users announced that they were establishing a fork to continue the development and distribution with the new name Mageia. That has proven to be a very good decision, because they have just made their fourth major release.





6. Mageia 4 Cinnamon, KDE and GNOME 3 screen shots

   Aside from the KDE and GNOME 3 desktop environments, Mageia 4 also features support for Cinnamon and MATE. This article presents screen shots from test installations of the Cinnamon, GNOME 3 and KDE desktops.





7. 5 Reasons Why PCLinuxOS Is Better For Windows XP Users Than Ubuntu

   This is not an attempt to disparage Ubuntu as it is a very good operating system and I would recommend it to most people. It is definitely a better step forward for Windows 7 users than Windows 8 would be.





8. ROSA Desktop Fresh R2 GNOME review

   ROSA Desktop is one of several distributions that are derived from Mandriva Linux. The others are Mageia and OpenMandriva. The latter has more in common with ROSA Desktop than Mageia does; many applications developed by ROSA labs are available in the OpenMandriva repositories, but not in the Mageia repositories.





9. A look at ROSA Fresh R2 LXDE Edition

   However, in recent times the Russian company has introduced a new desktop lineup called ROSA "Fresh". This desktop version is intended to be, as the name suggests, fresher in terms of software versions and therefore features etc whilst aiming to maintain stability and a good solid user experience and more than just KDE and Gnome versions have been made available.