Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC3 released

AdamWill writes "Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring RC3 "Beijing" is now available. Featuring the most comprehensive support for 3D desktop technologies, the latest versions of KDE, GNOME, Mozilla Firefox and others, a beautiful new theme and enhancements and refinements to the comprehensive suite of Mandriva configuration utilities, Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring is the best Mandriva Linux release yet. Beijing features fixes to all major bugs in previous betas and release candidates, the final version of GNOME 2.18, and the full feature set intended for the final release. Both traditional installer-based Free editions and combined live / install CD One editions are available. Beijing is available from all Mandriva mirror sites in the /devel/iso/2007.1 directory. Please consult the release notes for more information."

Re:

[jlarocco]

Is this new?

Yes. It's the latest release candidate, released a few days ago.

Is it based on Ubuntu?

No, it's Mandrake, which pre-dates Ubuntu. The name was changed from Mandrake to Mandriva after MandrakeSoft went bankrupt and merged with Connectiva in 2005.

See here [linuxquestions.org] for more information.

Re:

[renegadesx]

I think he was joking and you've been had. Mind you Mandrake's founder is working on an Ubuntu based distro after getting fired from his own company.

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

Is it based on Ubuntu?

No, its an old-ish distro, originally based on redhat. It still uses RPM.

Re:

[Seumas]

Based on Ubuntu? You mean based on Debian, right? Saying things are based on Ubuntu seems a little bit like saying that Vanilla Ice invented rap.

Re:

[MBGMorden]

Or they could just say "based on Linux". Or "based on ENIAC" ;).

How far back along the line of progression something wants to go before declaring themselves "based upon" that particular milestone is up to them.

Your statement is kinda like complaining about someone claiming that Vanilla Ice invented rap, whilst yourself claiming that The Sugarhill Gang invented music.

Re:

[i_should_be_working]

I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie
to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop
the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie
to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat

If there was some kind of so-called "music" before this came along, I don't want to know about it:)

Re:

[lpcustom]

He was asking to be funny. Unfortunately the humor is just flying right over the heads of most this morning I guess.

Is 3D support actually good this time?

[CastrTroy]

Is 3D desktop support actually good this time? Although it my be because i'm running with an ATI video card, I found that the 3D desktop support was terrible in the original Mandriva 2007. Frequent crashes where a major problem. I don't really need a 3D desktop, so I turned it off, but it sure would be nice to have a 3D desktop that works.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

No problems or crashes with my Intel chip, it only seems to have problems if I use the backports repositories and try to install the "latest and greatest" version. Now I know better.
Side note: Compiz is amazing to use and, to my surprise, actually increases my productivity with it's quick shortcuts and real time previews of different windows. Now if I could only run Blender while using it I wouldn't have to turn the 3D desktop on and off all the time. :-)
Does anyone know if I can run Blender properly in thi

Re:

[AdamWill]

Well, Compiz and Beryl have progressed since 2007 came out, so all those improvements are included. You may find it more stable this time. We just package up the latest available Compiz and Beryl and make sure drak3d sets them up properly; beyond that we're at the mercy of the code quality of the upstream projects :)

Re:

[Xtravar]

I had that problem even with my NVidia card. The original release worked OKAY but somewhere in the cooker things got majorly screwed up. I don't so much think it's Mandriva's problem as it is just all the projects coordinating and things being relatively new.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. Beijing is a city. Trotsky, Stalin, Marx and Lenin were communist leaders.

Re:

[ceeam]

The largest one with free-market endorsing government noted for manufacturing your notebook. And shoes. And...

Re:

[renegadesx]

China is a booming economy, the US is broke, welcome to the future troll.

Re:

[AdamWill]

The betas were all named after historic centres of power in China (going back to way before Communist rule). Hangzhou, Huanghe, Wei, Xianyang, Beijing. Heck, when you've been doing beta releases for nine years it starts getting hard to think of themes. =)

Re:

[Master of Transhuman]

They should start using hot babes - no shortage of them around.

Imagine the next release candidate being named the "Carmen Electra".

Re:I may have it at home, I downloaded Mandriva Fr

[AdamWill]

That was our last stable release. It's good too. :) This is the soon-to-be-released new release, 2007 Spring (AKA 2007.1).

Re:

[Master of Transhuman]

It WAS good - eventually. Unfortunately it destroyed my 2006 when I upgraded shortly after it was released (my mistake, I know - never upgrade until the bugs are cleaned up), so I switched to Kubuntu.

Try not to screw up this time and I might switch back since Mandriva is superior to Kubuntu in my view.

But not until three months have gone by and the most egregious bugs have been removed.

Yay for Mandriva

[Xtravar]

I think this has to be said, and I don't have a better place to say it - Mandriva is the best distro I have used. It may possibly be the only distribution of Linux that a power user can install and enjoy without worrying about low-level details and configuration.

I used Mandrake 7.0 - 9.0 on an old server at home for various Linux hackery. When I saw Mandrake 9.0, I said to myself, "I am switching my desktop to Linux at 10.0," and that's what I did, and I haven't looked back.

Mandriva lets you run Gnome or KDE right out of the box. Its configuration utilities let you do almost anything with ease. It may have stability issues once in awhile if you run out of their development 'cooker' branch, but it's gotten a ton better in the past few years.

With the PLF repository, you get all of the 'banned' functionality that's not packaged with Mandriva (windows codecs, etc).

Some user-friendly distributions are severely limited when you want to go beyond the basics. They don't have up-to-date development RPMs or don't have utilities that support advanced configuration.

If only Mandriva weren't so expensive I might actually get the commercial version. Honestly, the improvements from version to version have been astounding.