Getting closer to the release of Mandriva Desktop 2011. The first release candidate was made available June 30, 2011. I do not like to review pre-stable releases, so this is not going to be a review, but a teaser, a taste of what is to come.

Mageia is a new Linux distribution formed by former employees and contributors of Mandriva, a Linux software provider and publisher of a line of Linux distributions of the same name. The first stable release (of Mageia) has since been reviewed for this website (see Mageia 1 review). This article presents the steps necessary to install it on an encrypted LVM file system.

Mandriva, one of my favorite Linux distributions, has been forked, and the new distribution is named Mageia. With the well publicized mass exodus of developers and contributors, this does not come as shock. I usually view these developments with caution, but this one I am actually happy about. Here are my reasons:

Mandriva 2011, code name Hydrogen, is the latest desktop edition of the popular Linux distribution. Released August 28, 2011, it marks a new direction in the development of Mandriva desktop distribution. Where there used to be three versions of previous editions, the Release Notes say that only two versions are available for download.

The last of the pre-releases of Mandriva Desktop 2011, Mandriva Desktop 2011 RC 2, was made available for download yesterday, just one day behind schedule. It, of course, looks better, runs better, than the previous pre-release, which I previewed here.

Mageia has been pretty popular ever since its original release last year. While all Linux distributions give you more choice than any other operating system, Mageia was one of the few distros that has a lot of these choices upfront. This is partly due to it being an offshoot of Mandriva, however the team at Mageia have taken it noticeably further

The Mageia project is a fork of Mandriva Linux. It is a brand new project, announced on September 18, 2010. There is an ongoing discussion about different aspects of the project, and one of those discussion revolves around the project’s logo.

Mandriva Desktop 2011 will be the next stable release of the popular desktop Linux distribution developed by Mandriva, a Linux software publisher based in France.

Ubuntu and Mandriva are two of the most popular desktop Linux brands. Both are backed by commercial entities. Ubuntu by Canonical Ltd., and Mandriva by Mandriva. Both are free to download and use, and have a vibrant, online user community. Ubuntu is a GNOME-based distro, while Mandriva One has separate iso images for GNOME and KDE desktop environments.