Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, is a French software company
that was founded in 1998, having offices in France, Brazil, and the
USA. It was forced to change its name in 2004 to Mandriva
following a court case against the Hearst Corporation.
Its main goal was and still is to provide an easy-to-use and friendly GNU/Linux system. All code
developed and
distributed by Mandriva is released under the General Public License or
equivalent. Mandriva's commercial products include proprietary
third-party software products, which contain their own licensing
models.
Mandriva Linux 2008
Key
Facts
Developer:
Mandriva
Price:
One (Live
CD, No
charge), Linux Free (No
charge), Download version (EUR 17.00), Discovery (EUR 44.00), Powerpack
(EUR 69.90), PowerPack+ (EUR
179.00)
The result of six months of heavy development and testing, 2008
includes all the latest software and many enhancements over previous
Mandriva Linux releases. You will find KDE 3.5.7 and the new GNOME 2.20
already integrated, a solid kernel 2.6.22.9 with fair scheduling
support, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1, cutting-edge 3D-accelerated desktop
courtesy of Compiz Fusion 0.5.2, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6, and
everything else you've come to expect from the latest Mandriva Linux
release. They have integrated a reworked hardware detection sub-system,
with support for a lot of new devices (particularly graphics cards,
sound cards and wireless chips). Also, the addition of new features and
ongoing improvements to the renowned Mandriva tools continues,
including a wizard to import Windows documents and settings, the new
network configuration center, and improvements to the Mandriva software
management tools.
Other features include:
Compiz Fusion, the result of the re-merge between the
Compiz and Beryl 3D desktop technologies, replaces Compiz and Beryl.
X.org
7.2, featuring the new XrandR 1.2 framework which
vastly
improves support for multiple displays and display hotplugging on
supported drivers
Windows document and setting migration tool which acts as a
front end to Migration Assistant
System Requirements
CPU: Any
Intel or AMD processor -
dual-core supported
RAM: 256
MB minimum, 512 MB
recommended
DVD drive required
Video Card: NVIDIA,
ATI, Intel®
i8xx and i9xx, SIS, Matrox, VIA. 3D desktop features requires NVIDIA
GeForce or later, ATI Radeon 7000 or later, or Intel i810 to i965.
Sound Card: Any
Sound
Blaster-compatible card and AC97 – Creative Labs
X-Fi cards are not currently supported.
Minimum hard disk
space: 3GB for a
smooth installation- 4GB if you plan to use KDE 4.
Serial ATA: Most
controllers
supported in non-RAID mode and some in RAID mode.
About
Mandriva