Kicking off the 2008.1 development cycle in earnest, the first alpha is here. This alpha features X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8, KDE 4.0 RC2 (in /contrib), GNOME 2.21, kernel 2.6.24, OpenOffice.org 2.3, new NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, PulseAudio by default and more. Despite being a first alpha, it is also in a fairly stable and reliable state. Check out the Mandriva 2008.1 Alpha 1 screenshots by The Coding Studio.

The first alpha release of Mageia 2 has been made available for download and testing. As you might expect, this is not a review-quality release, so if you have the time and resources, time to start hunting for bugs – and reporting them, if any, to Mageia Bugzilla. Installation and Live CD and DVD ISO images for 32- and 64-bit platforms are available for download here.

Mandriva today announces the release of Mandriva Flash 2008 Spring, the new release of its popular bootable distribution on a USB key. This new version uses the new Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring as its base, doubles the key's capacity to 8GB, introduces a new installer which allows you to install Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring to the system's hard disk, and comes in an attractive new white color scheme.

The Ubuntu development team unleashed the fifth alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), due for release in late October this year.

"Emacs is a class of text editors that have an extensive set of features and that are popular with computer programmers and other technically proficient computer users. GNU Emacs, a part of the GNU project, is under active development and is the most popular version.

The Moblin.org project, which supports Intel Atom-based mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and netbooks, continues to gain support, with Good OS (GoS), Mandriva, and Turbolinux announcing they will contribute to the project.

Delayed one day, the fifth alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 8.10 (codename Intrepid Ibex), which is scheduled for release in late October this year, was made available a few hours ago and, as usual, we intend to keep you up-to-date with the latest changes in the Ubuntu 8.10 development.

Let’s take a quick look at the included applications:

As you may or may not know Haiku OS Alpha 1 was recently released. It is a full featured and improved clone of the old BeOS. OSNews has a nice review starting with a bit of history.

Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2 is released today. This alpha introduces KDE 4 - 4.1 beta 2, specifically - as the default version of KDE, and the latest development version of GNOME, 2.23.4. The kernel has also been updated to 2.6.26rc7. Mandriva warns that this is a true alpha, likely to contain many bugs related to the new version of KDE.