What's New In Mandriva Linux 2010.0

Mandriva Linux 2010.0 was released, bringing a lot of new features and improvements, such as:

• KDE 4.3 as the default KDE desktop. This major new release of KDE further enhances the KDE desktop experience.
• Other major new software versions include GNOME 2.28, OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 and Mozilla Firefox 3.5.
• Mandriva 2010 is using the 2.6.31 Linux Kernel, with the usual assortment of patches by the excellent Mandriva Kernel Team to make sure it's tailored to the distro.
• Improved boot performance: Mandriva 2010 boot performances have been improved based on the ongoing efforts started with the Mandriva 2009 Spring release. You will also find the system shuts down, hibernates, suspends, and resumes faster. On top of that, bootsplash is now managed by Plymouth with an improved boot theme artwork.
• Better installer: the hard drive partitioning step in the Mandriva Installer has been redesigned to be more user friendly
• Moblin support: Mandriva Linux 2010 is the first Linux-based operating system to include a full Moblin environment. The "task-moblin" package needs to be installed. After that, choose "Moblin" from the session list in the connection manager
• Sugar Desktop support - like Moblin, the Sugar desktop is also present in Mandriva Linux 2010. By installing the "task-sugar" package, the Sugar desktop environment will be available in the session list, on the login screen
• Better support for Intel graphics cards: thanks to the new UXA acceleration method and DRI2, the new driver for Intel graphics cards improves the overall performance/stability (including suspend and resume) and reduces display flickering during boot;
• Support for modern netbooks: the support for hardware components found in latest netbooks on the market, such as Asus Eee PC models, the Acer Aspire One or the MSI Wind, has been greatly improved;

Themes and bootsplash

Mandriva Linux 2010 is shipped with 4 distinctive new themes (or flavours): Free, One, Powerpack and Flash, each being installed depending on the Mandriva edition you are installing.

Free edition install theme	Free edition Plymouth theme	Flash edition theme
PowerPack edition theme	One edition theme edition	Screensaver

Under GNOME and KDE environment, the wallpaper will change depending on the hour of the day: if you look carefully you will notice that some subtle changes will occur as the daytime goes by.

Mandriva Linux 2010 screensaver will display a slideshow of different landscapes in the world.

And the new ksplash:

Unfortunately, I have a lot of things to do lately, so I wasn't able to test myself the new Mandriva 2010.0, and also there are no ready to use Virtualbox images yet for Mandriva 2010.0, that's why the credits for the images and info in this post go to: Mandriva wiki, news.softpedia.com and Mandriva Italia (where you can also find alternative FTP server downloads).


Download Mandriva One 2010.0 Live CD or Free DVD