Mandriva 2012 Alpha released

The first Alpha edition of Mandriva Desktop 2012 has been released. Behind schedule by almost two months, it is fittingly code-named Tenacious Underdog. The first Technical Preview, code-named Bernie Lomax, was released back in May, and the next pre-release version, which is due by early October, will likely be the first Beta.

I do not even want to guess what the code name for that one will be, but I am sure it will be have a kick to it. You may view the roadmap for Mandriva Desktop 2012 here.

Highlights of this pre-release edition are (my comments in parentheses):

• Faster, smaller & much improved installer (I did two installations before publishing this article, and I did not notice any difference from previous editions of the installer.)
• Installer text mode is now working again
• A slimmer, much improved and fixed rescue mode
• Dual arch CD iso image has been much improved with a more complete set of packages
  filling it and also LXDE now shipped with it and installed by default (LXDE is shipped, but it is not the default. A default installation of a CD image gives you a non-graphical system. This has been officially noted as a bug)
• Switch to Linaro’s gcc 4.7 branch has been completed
• HAL has finally been put to rest for good
• KDE 4.9.0

Here are some screen shots from a test installation of the KDE and GNOME desktops. The LXDE desktop was not worth taking screen shots from, even after I installed the graphical desktop.

This is the main desktop, but that is not the default wallpaper. I changed it just to make it more presentable.

A screen shot of SimpleWelcome, Mandriva’s menu, showing some installed applications.

More from SimpleWelcome.

I wanted to show screen shots from a GNOME desktop installation, but this is all I could afford. Hope you understand.

Want to help the developers make this distribution better? Download it from here, install and test it and report bugs.