Linux vendor Mandrakesoft today released the latest version of its distribution, Mandrakelinux
version 10.1. The new version builds on the community release of the same number with additional
stability and support.
The last official version of Mandrakelinux version 10.0
was released in May of this year.
“Compared to 10.0, the 10.1 release is more polished and offers most of the latest Linux features,”
Gakl Duval Founder of Mandrakelinux told internetnews.com. “In 10.1, we have focused on hardware
support. In particular, the support of laptop has improved much. For instance, Mandrakelinux 10.1
Official integrates Intel Centrino drivers.”
In fact, the new release focuses on mobility, as it includes new advanced power management
features and expanded Wi-Fi capabilities. Mandrakelinux 10.1 has a Wi-Fi roaming feature
that detects and remembers previously utilized access points. Bluetooth device support has also
been added to this release.
On the device support side, Mandrakesoft claims that Mandrakelinux 10.1 has expanded the range of
compatible hardware. The hardware management software included in the distribution now will
automatically recognize and configure “a large number of devices,” including USB storage devices.
The new version also includes a new compiler and an improved package management software (urpmi 4.5)
that is intended to help make the system, ‘more coherent as a whole’.
This latest version of Mandrakelinux has benefited from extensive community testing before hitting
‘official’ status which Mandrake believes helps to bring a more polished product to market.
“The Community is now a key release since it provides in time an “on the edge” product to our expert
users, and they love that, thus helping us to polish the product towards the Official release,” Duval
said. “As a result, it’s very unlikely that we will see again a big issue in an official release,
like the one we had with the LG bug two years ago.”
As part of the effort to ensure polish and stability for users, Mandrakelinux 10.1 has
omitted two of the latest pieces of desktop Linux, namely
GNOME 2.8 and
KDE 3.3from the default installation options.
The company made this decision because it’s clear that they still need much polishing work to be stable enough,
Duval explained.
“So we put rock solid KDE 3.2.3 and GNOME 2.6 by default, and we offer KDE 3.3 and
GNOME 2.8 separately, for those who aren’t scared to hack their system to make it work properly.”
Novell’s SUSE Linux distribution, which recently
released its latest version
includes the latest KDE, but not Gnome 2.8. It is expected that Red Hat’s upcoming Fedora Core 3 release will
have both KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.8.
This has been a whirlwind year for Mandrakesoft, since emerging from bankruptcy
in March.
It has now released two versions (10 and 10.1) of its Mandrakesoft Linux. It’s also pushing the
envelope of secure Linux development in a
new initiative
to create an EAL 5 version of Linux.
