Mandriva Linux 2009 Released

Adam Williamson writes "Mandriva has today released Mandriva Linux 2009, the new major release of the popular distribution. 2009 is a bold release which brings the new KDE 4 as the default desktop, along with a re-designed installer and Mandriva Control Center and many other new features. Other significant updates include GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3, Mozilla Firefox 3, and kernel 2.6.27. Key features include new graphical in-line upgrade capability, netbook compatibility, class-leading hardware support, and further improved support for working with mobile devices. For more details, see the Release Tour and the Release Notes. Get it at the download page, or go straight to the torrent list."

Re:Wow, now that's a trick!

[stas1987]

whats the difference between mandriva "one" and "free"

Worth a spin...?

[zooblethorpe]

I had Mandrake installed some time back, and was happy with the package manager they had at the time since it finally dealt with some of the dependency hell issues that Red Hat suffered from. But at some point a software update and server migration went funny (on their end), and the package manager couldn't find the right site to update itself, and since I couldn't be bothered to dig into the internals to fix it (some of us use Linux to do other things :) and a reinstall looked like the easiest course, I opted to jump ship and tried out Ubuntu instead. But I'm curious to see what's happened in the intervening years.

Cheers,

Useless summaries

[Enderandrew]

Each distro includes OpenOffice.org, Gnome, KDE, etc. I can get Gnome 2.24 by upgrading packages within my existing distro. openSUSE 11.1 and Fedora 9 will ship with it. So what actually sets this apart? I haven't used Mandriva since it was Mandrake, and I'm curious.

I hear they got a great "Control Panel" that rivals Yast. What is it like? What unique features does the distro have?

Wouldn't that be the pertinent information to have?

Re:Worth a spin...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is not hard to install and it is the easiest operating system to manage.

Oh, it also has quality assurance unlike that popular brown distro and their 6-month release cycle. Lenny is currently much, *much* more stable than Intrepid. The former will be "good enough" to be called "Debian Stable" in 3 or 4 months, the latter will be rushed out of the door in a couple of weeks or so.

Concerned about Pulse Audio and older video cards

[Zombie Ryushu]

My major concern is going to be Pulse Audio. When 2008.1 came out, I migrated from 2008.0. I found out there were patches made to SDL that broke compatibility with many Linux games. It took weeks of "digging them out." to solve the problems. Now sound works the way it should. I'm frightened that it will mean more digging up bad patches in SDL to stop annoying crackling effects in games.

Also, not every computer I own has a "nice" Nvidia FX5200. A few of them have older Sis, Matrox, Intel, and my Cooker Box which has one of the 2009.0 release candidates on it has a Voodoo 3. The Voodoo 3 card crashes when DRI is enabled. Not due to a proprietary driver, but due to some older cards development falling by the wayside.

Re:Worth a spin...?

[Psychotria]

"Quality assurance"? Are you serious? What a load of cow pooh. What on Earth is "quality assurance" anyway? For quality assurance I would, at least, expect a Quality Management System. A certified (ISO) one. Debian does not have that. If there is not a quality management system, why should I belive that Debian offers "quality assurance"?