Mandriva 2006
Of course, another bit of news the last couple of weeks was the release of Mandriva 2006 by Mandriva Linux. Of course Mandriva is the former Mandrake, which merged/bought Connectiva and then acquired Lycoris, so this is the first release to start drawing on the extended talent pool that they’ve now acquired. From what I’ve seen it looks VERY nice. I’ve got the isos on a removable hard drive and have been looking for a chance to get the install going on my laptop.
One thing that has slowed me down in installing the new Mandriva is this… I have mythtv setup on several machines on my network. The desktop acquires tv from the capture card and then the server and laptop can act as remote frontends. I’m reluctant to “upset the apple cart” with respect to this because I’ll need to have all three running the same mythtv version for mythtv to work at each station. The laptop will be the first to upgrade though since I use it least, I’ll test it there for a few days and then get things prepared for the desktop upgrade.
Personally, I like seeing a slower (once per year) release cycle, going through an upgrade of several machines every six months get’s tiresome. It’s nice to have a bit longer between new releases. I did notice at the MandrivaClub, that OpenOffice.Org 2 has been released to club members. (A pre-2 version was available in the club download.) This is also a good thing to see. One of the gripes I’ve heard about the longer release cycles was the availability of more current releases of the other software. Nice to see them making some available through the club. (For those that support Mandriva financially.)
On a side note, it’s usually not a tall task to get source rpms from cooker and rebuild them, but that’s fodder for another article.