blackPanther OS 14.1

The developers of blackPanther OS, a Hungarian distribution that originally forked from Mandriva, have announced the launch of blackPanther OS 14.1. The blackPanther distribution ships with the KDE 4 desktop and offers users a unified settings panel that combines KDE's System Settings and Mandriva's Control Centre. "We are sure you’ll enjoy the many improvements. We’ve done our best to bring the latest technology to blackPanther while still maintaining the stability and security that you have come to expect. blackPanther OS is well known for its simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the condition that the authors intended. blackPanther OS v14.1 (Walking Dead) brings many updates and enhancements, KDE 4.14, a recent stable release of the 4.1x.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment." Further information is available in the project's release announcement (English, Hungarian). Download: blackPantherOS-v14.1-WalkingDead-i586-CD.iso

OpenMandriva Lx 2013.0 RC2

The second and final release candidate for the inaugural stable release of OpenMandriva Lx is now available for download and testing: "And here it comes - a week after RC1, OpenMandriva 2013.0 Lx RC2 is out on schedule. It's been mostly bug fixing and polishing at this stage. Nothing much different from RC1. You'll notice, though, that we've only got one launcher for RC2, KickOff. If you want SimpleWelcome, you can install rosa-launcher, if you want Homerun, you can install homerun and if you want Lancelot, you can install plasma-applet-lancelot. In RC2 we completed the artwork integration. It includes fixing of the plymouth theme, updated GRUB, ksplash, user avatars, and got a brand new screensaver. Additionally, following the results of 'The Flavour of Freedom' wallpaper contest, we've included the winners of the contest into 2013.0. In RC2 you'll find: Linux kernel 3.11.6, KDE 4.11, Firefox 25.0, LibreOffice 4.1.3." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information and screenshots. Download: OpenMandrivaLx-2013.0-rc2.x86_64.iso (1,522MB, MD5).

Mandriva Linux 2012 Alpha 2

Per Øyvind Karlsen has announced the availability of the second alpha release of the new "Moondrake GNU/Linux" which is a possible new name for the venerable Mandriva Linux distribution: "Yet again keeping up the tradition of delays, a new prerelease is out: Moondrake GNU/Linux 2012 Alpha 2. Some highlights of this release are: ISO image creation tool has been rewritten in Python, made several times faster and merged with DrakX; dual-architecture ISO image features a complete set of all LXDE packages; new, complete sound theme; initial work on rewriting installer and libraries in C++ has been started; installer stage 1 and rescue mode merged; much extended set of packages built for uClibc environment; GRUB 2 has replaced isolinux for the installer; KDE 4.9.2." See the full release announcement for further notes. Download: moondrake-2012-alpha2-dual-cd.iso (704MB, MD5), moondrake-2012-alpha2-x86_64-dvd.iso (3,838MB, MD5).

Mandriva Linux 2012 Alpha

Per Øyvind Karlsen has announced the availability of the first alpha release of Mandriva Linux 2012: "As many of you might already be aware of, our first Mandriva Linux 2012 alpha has been ready for release for almost a week now, yet it only made its way to the public mirrors today, so with that I declare it as officially released! Some of the highlights since 2012 Tech Preview include: faster, smaller and much improved installer; installer text-mode is now working again; a slimmer, much-improved and fixed rescue mode; dual architecture CD image has been improved with a more complete set of packages filling it and also LXDE now shipped with it and installed by default; switch to Linaro's GCC 4.7 branch has been completed; HAL has finally been put to rest for good...." For more details please read the release announcement and release notes. Download the installation DVD images from here: mandriva-2012-i586-DVD.iso (4,165MB, MD5), mandriva-2012-x86_64-DVD.iso (4,201MB, MD5).

ROSA 2012 RP 1

Konstantin Kochereshkin has announced the release of an updated build of ROSA 2012, a Mandriva-based Linux distribution. Labelled as RP (Release Pack) 1, this is largely a bug-fix release with a handful of package updates. From the release announcement: "Today we are announcing the first update pack for the ROSA 'Marathon' 2012 release (Release Pack 1). The Release Pack 1 includes all LTS updates and bug fixes available at the moment: users can now avoid some graphical cards issues which prevented booting into live mode or into initial installation by using safe mode; Firefox was updated to the latest LTS version 10.0.4 and the default Yandex search issue was fixed; Linux kernel was updated to 3.0.38; KDE updated to 4.8.3...." Download: ROSA.2012.RP1.MARATHON.EE.i586.iso (1,441MB, MD5), ROSA.2012.RP1.MARATHON.EE.x86_64.iso (1,468MB, MD5).

Mandriva ventures into unknown territory

The decision taken by Mandriva SA, the French company that produces the Mandriva GNU/Linux distribution, to base its workstation and server products on two different codebases is a pragmatic one, based on the state of the two codebases.
But it is also a political decision because by deciding to have two upstreams, it is trying to humour those who split away nearly two years ago and keep them inside the tent.
Mandriva has been in the wars for many years. The most recent turn of events saw the company being put up for sale and then, after some effort, desperately trying to turn things around so that it could start to pull itself out of bankruptcy.

Rest here

Vote for Mandriva's New Name

Mandriva S.A., through Charles Schulz, posted a very interesting announcement on their blog, asking users to vote for the new name of the Mandriva Linux distribution.

Wait, what? Why a new name? Well, long story short, it looks like Mandriva S.A. wants to separate the Mandriva community and the distribution from the company.

"In the future, Mandriva as a brand name will remain the name of the company (Mandriva S.A.) but the community itself will have a different name and a different branding, although it is also possible that the brand and the name will keep a tight connection with Mandriva."

"We had to prepare the available choices; we came up with some names during the meeting in Paris, we also listened to some ideas expressed on the Foundation mailing list," said Charles Schulz in the blog announcement.

Among possible names chosen by Mandriva for the future distribution, we can mention OpenMandriva, Commundriva, Dracanea Linux, Drake Linux, Mana Linux, Mandala Linux, Mira Linux, Moondrake, NorthStar Linux, OpenDrake, Pulsar Linux, and Tulipa Linux.

But if you don't like any of the above, you can always send your own suggestions, and if they become very popular, Mandriva will consider them.

How does the vote system work? Mandriva will keep the poll open for an entire week, starting with July 5th. The vote closes on Thursday, 12th of July, at 13:30 CET (Paris time).

I voted for Moondrake, as it sounds really good to me, but looking at the results, it seems that OpenMandriva is now the most voted one, followed by Mandala Linux, and Moondrake on the third place.

There are only 1,126 votes at the moment, which makes us wondering where is the Mandriva community? Come on people, keep your distro alive and give it a new name.

Vote HERE and send suggestions to community AT mandriva DOT com.

Mandriva Foundation Structure Illustrated, OpenMDV Intro'd

Mandriva Open Source Relations Manager, Charles Schulz, today tried to clarify the foundation's vision of structure of community interaction and resulting products. Instead of explaining, he posted a flow-chart to illustrate the relationships between downstream and upstream projects, contributors, and the Mandriva distribution.
Schulz describes the diagram as "an attempt at describing how the project will work and what it will aim at. It displays the general logic of contributions, by and for the community but also integrates what will be external products meant to be sold by companies that are based on the software development and packaging done inside the foundation."

As you can see the still-forming Mandriva community is broken down into three main contribution sources: Rosa, Mandriva community, and Mandriva SA employees. All these will contribute to the "Share Cooker" repository. Several projects are shown pulling code out of the shared Cooker repo. MIB and Unity base their projects' on Mandriva code and are shown as pulling from Cooker, but not contributing back.
The most interesting section is the resulting products. OpenMDV, which one assumes is going to be the new name for the Open Source community release, seems to be the main focus. Rosa Linux, who offers a customized version of Mandriva, will naturally continue to pull from Cooker. And finally there's a box to symbolize a range of whatever Mandriva commercial products they may want to base on Cooker.
Schulz hopes this helps folks makes sense of the Mandriva Linux Foundation, but there still seems to be some persistent talk of Mandriva SA using Mageia code for their commercial products.