The French Linux distribution Mandriva has had a few turbulent years lately. At the end of last year a large number of developers left the company to start a new Linux distribution based on Mandriva, which they called Mageia.
The development of this Mandriva fork was begun in September last year, and now the first version of Mageia is available for download.
Last year, Mandriva had to cut their staff, and a large number of developers left the company to start a new Linux distribution based on Mandriva, which they called Mageia.
Mageia is now available as a Beta1 release. The developers points out that this Beta1 is not intended for normal users, but for advanced users like developers and test users, as you can read in the statement below.
Mandriva has just released the second alpha of Mandriva 2011, and so far the Linux distribution contains plenty of new software. Unlike many other Linux distributions, Mandriva still offers OpenOffice and has not yet made the move to LibreOffice.
Mandriva has also chosen to use the new Red Hat developed system launcher "systemd", which will provide faster boot, since services can be started simultaneously.
Mandriva has been in financial difficulties for a long time now, and it has forced the company to take action. According to Frederik’s Blog it is the fact that Mandriva’s e new management has decided to close down Edge-IT, that has resulted in the developers leaving the sinking ship.
