Mandriva 2012 technical preview

With the release of Mandriva 2012 technology preview last week, Mandriva SA has taken the first step towards publishing Mandriva 2012. The release announcement shows that the company will now support desktop environments other than the K Desktop Environment, which was the default and only desktop environment supported in Mandriva Desktop 2011.

The installer in this technical preview gives you the option to install a KDE desktop (default), a GNOME 3 desktop, LXDE and Other desktop. I hoped to show screen shots from test installations of supported desktop environments, but the GNOME 3 installation was too buggy to use. As a result, only screen shots from the KDE, LXDE and Other desktops are featured.

Starting with the boot menu, here is what it looks like. New theme.

But nothing new in the installation program, unless you consider the option of choosing desktop environments to be new, which it really is not. KDE is the default.

And the login screen. The guest account is installed by default.

I took just one screen shot from the LXDE installation, and it is of the default desktop. Other than GIMP and Firefox 12 and Mandriva administrative tools, there are no other applications installed. Bare bones.

Selecting Other actually gives you a basic WindowMaker installation. Again, bare bones.

The KDE desktop is where the action is. Unlike the LXDE and Other (WindowMaker) desktop, you get a complete desktop with all applications, including many games, installed.

This screen shot show some of the installed applications. Despite the variety in, two applications that could have made Mandriva KDE very appealing out of the box, are not installed or are not available. These are ROMP (available but not installed) and KLook (not available).

Did I mention that there are games installed?

Unlike on ROSA Marathon 2012, TimeFrame feature is enabled by default. ROSA Marathon/Desktop is a distribution based on Mandriva.

This just shows the Welcome tab of SimpleWelcome. SimpleWelcome is the menu.

And you get the Mandriva Control Center.

You may download an installation image of Mandriva 2012 tech preview from here or here.