Mageia Linux next month
In the wake of Mandriva’s financial woes a new Linux operating system is readying to launch. Called Mageia, the new release was created because Mandriva was facing financial troubles and there was uncertainty around the future of Mandriva.
Mandriva has always been one of the most popular Linux versions, particularly among first-time Linux users who found it easy to get used to to. Mandriva was originally known as Mandrake and was one of the first big Linux releases. Over the years Mandriva/Mandrake faced a series of financial troubles, each time being rescued at the last moment.
This time is no different and with uncertainty around Mandriva’s future, a group of Mandriva developers used the software to create Mageia. According to the new development team the first alpha release of the desktop operating system is due for release in December.
The first full release of Mageia is planned, according to the team’s roadmap, for March.
The bulk of Mageia will be based on current Mandriva code so substantial changes for the first release shouldn’t be expected. The development team has already set some modest goals for this release including: finalising licensing components, new themes, icons and branding. There is also a fair amount of work to be done to ensure that applications shipped with the release and created by Mandriva are legally compatible.
The organisation behind Mageia is non-profit, designed to ensure that the release can outlive any corporate failures, of which Mandriva/Mandrake has had its fair share.
Mageia’s stated objectives are to make Linux and free software straight forward to use for everyone, provide integrated system configuration tools, keep a high-level of integration between the base system, the desktop and applications, better third-party software integration, and expand to support as many architectures and devices as possible.
These objectives are not that different to Mandriva’s which were focused around ease-of-use. Of all the Linux releases available, Mandriva made a concerted effort to appeal to a broad base of users that were switching to Linux for the first time.
Only time will tell whether or not Mageia will have the resources and the developers to make a suitable successor to Mandriva.
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