Summary: How Mageia, OpenMandriva, PCLinuxOS and others successfully succeed the success of Mandriva GNU/Linux

A LOT OF people forgot about Mandriva. Some key staff from Mandriva was hired by Red Hat and Google, the company's ownership was moved to Russia, and some of the project's successors took a very corporate-centric role, such as ROSA.

I first used Mandriva some time in 2002 and I later used it permanently in 2008 and 2009. It was one of the best distributions at that time and it received wonderful reviews. Many people these days tend to ignore Mandriva or simply dismiss it as inferior to Ubuntu and even Fedora. But this couldn't be further from the truth. Some might even think that it's no longer possible to get one's hands on Mandriva, even though several derivatives exist which are totally free with no strings attached. The most famous among those is probably Mageia, which gets favourable reviews [1], and it has just added an advisories Web site [2]. Mandriva itself has OpenMandriva [3], but due to its short life so far it is hard to say how much one can rely on it. The longest-running branch of Mandriva is actually PCLinuxOS, which is very much alive and well [4,5].

If you look for a distribution which is practical to use and is not necessarily free-respecting as judged by the FSF, give one of the Mandriva derivatives a try. Mandriva is still in the game. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Mageia 3

   Mageia 3 has been out for a while, and I’ve finally had time to do a review. Mageia is a fork of the Mandriva distribution, and offers quite a bit to desktop Linux users. It comes with a great selection of preinstalled software, and it is available in 32-bit or 64-bit versions on DVD (3.96 GB). You also have the option of getting it on CD (700 MB).





2. Mageia update advisories web site

   The advisories published before June 2013 are not available on this website, but are still available on the wiki.





3. OpenMandriva Releases the Beta 1!

   According to this post, OpenMandriva Lx Beta 1 is now available for downloads.

4. On Gaming, Upgrading, and PCLinuxOS

   Now, armed with both Desura and Steam, this laptop with PCLinuxOS has turned itself into a nice source of entertainment.

5. PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe and LXDE 2013.10 Review