For All You Linux Users Out There

[Jitway]

Mandriva updates its Linux distribution for spring. Mandriva quietly launched Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, the latest Mandriva Linux distribution featuring a number of updates since its last distribution release.

 

"The release has some really nice new features, and looks to be pretty solid and stable," said Mandriva Community Manager Adam Williamson wrote in his blog. "We're really happy with it."

 

Although its fanfare has recently been drowned out by up-and-coming distributions such as Ubuntu Linux from Canonical, Mandriva still remains a popular operating system, especially with new users. The latest verswion has been in the works for more than six months by Mandriva developers and the open source community, and features several new features aimed at making it easier for users to interact with the operating system.

 

KDE 3 version 3.5.9 is included to closely mimic the GUI of Microsoft Windows, enabling newcomers to open source to try Linux in a somewhat familiar environment. The support team also made it easier for users to sync their Windows Mobile, Nokia, and BlackBerry devices.

 

Most importantly for Asus EeePC users, Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring now works "flawlessly" with users no longer forced to make adjustments to the environment. For example, wireless networking and native resolution caused some Eee owners headaches.

 

The included Elisa multimedia center is a drag-and-drop capable feature that lets users store their photos, music, and videos.

 

Also included with the spring release is a new parental control tool that flags improper Web content before letting children see it. Parents can manually block certain Web sites and create time charts that limits the amount of time children have access.

 

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is available immediately for download for no cost to users http://www.mandriva.com/en/download

 

 

 

Now while this uses KDE and I know a lot of you prefer Gnome I found this update to Mandriva very nice and easy to use. Really good for first timers who want to explore with Linux. I have used this version of Linux in the past and got to say they have finally worked a lot of the bugs out of it. Though I prefer Ubuntu and Redhat I do like this one as well. I am running it now on a spare machine.

[gavin19]

Mandrake was the very first distro I tried out some years ago now, though I haven't tried it in it's new incarnation yet.

 

I never understood the preference for Gnome myself so I always lent towards KDE-based distros, especially Mepis, or any Debian distro for that matter.

[ken_cinder]

I started using Mandrake (WTF is with this Mandriva crap?) back at Mandrake 3, and I have to say it's by far the most versatile AND user friendly distro in existance. As with Windows, you can be a beginner or a power user and it will suit your needs.

 

I btw, prefer KDE over Gnome by a long shot. KDE is far more friendly and easier to make it do what you want than Gnome is IMO.

I'm still not going back to Linux in any way though, until game developers stop being sacks of $hit and start putting out *nix releases of games. The lack of support for anything but Windows disgusts me. There are only THREE mainstream devs that support Linux. Epic, ID and Vivendi (Well, I don't know about Vivendi NOW...but they were).

Why is MS getting slapped with things like "anti-trust" when the game dev community is FAR more guilty of it? Wait a minute.....they both should be, with the closed platform that DirectX is!