The Official Mandriva Blog

The sixth pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is here. This pre-release includes support for easy synchronization of Windows Mobile 5+, Blackberry and Nokia devices, the Codeina multimedia codec installation system, support for Radeon HD 3xxx series graphics cards, more improvements to the Mandriva software installation tools, the finalized 2008 Spring theme, a new metapackage for easily installing a complete LAMP setup, and available KDE 4.0.2. See here for download information.

The upcoming Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring release will boast the easiest ever support for synchronizing with Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices in any distribution. The adventurous can already try out the support in the current 2008 Spring pre-release repositories, by following the instructions here. Mandriva has uploaded a video demonstrating how easy it is to synchronize with a Windows Mobile 6 device right out of the box with Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Support is included for synchronizing with both KDE (KDE PIM) and GNOME (Evolution). Similarly easy synchronization is also possible with many Nokia phones and with Blackberry devices.

The fifth pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is here. This pre-release includes the all-new artwork for the 2008 Spring release, further improvements to the Mandriva software management tools, WPA-EAP support in the network configuration tools, KDE 3.5.9 and available 4.0.1, some new default applications in KDE and GNOME, and the latest pre-release of OpenOffice.org 2.4. See here for download information.

It’s that time of year again - Linux Journal’s annual Readers’ Choice survey has begun. This is one of the big ones, so let’s see some community spirit! You can take part in the survey here. Every vote counts - it really helps to raise Mandriva’s profile in the Linux world, so vote today.

Our recent announcement concerning the creation of a joint lab with Turbolinux has generated some controversy. Even PJ, from Groklaw, a site we like very much at Mandriva, showed some concerns and signaled her intention to stop using our Distro.

So I would like to clarify some points:

1. Signing he Manbo Labs agreement does not change anything to our policy or our commitment to Free and Open Source software and our position with respect to software patent, nor does it change anything to the statement we made about Microsoft partnerships.
2. Our position about software patents is that software should not be patented and we have supported in Europe the fight against software patents.
3. Our support for principles of open source remains what we have always stated

• • everything we develop and distribute is under GPL
  • we develop, maintain and distribute for free a pure GPL distro (Mandriva Free)
  • we develop, maintain and distribute for free a live and light distro (Mandriva One)

1. We are aware and acknowledge the Turbolinux position with respect to Microsoft, and we know that it is very different from ours. The agreement is written so that Mandriva can fully maintain its commitment to Free Open Source.
2. As for Manbo Labs:
   1. The scope of work is about 100 low level RPMs, all in GPL
   2. Product will be available for public release under GPL
   3. Development is public, made on our Cooker environment and associates the community

So we believe that, by setting up Manbo Labs, we are contributing to the development and use of Linux and Free and Open Source software.

The second pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is here. This pre-release brings a near-final snapshot of KDE 4.0 (final 4.0 packages are currently being uploaded to the Cooker repositories), new NVIDIA and ATI drivers, the chance to test the experimental nouveau open source driver for NVIDIA cards, kernel 2.6.24rc7, and more. See here for download information.