Mandriva distribution team is proud to announce brand new 2010 Spring release! After some delays, here it comes finally. Many updates and exciting new features:

• encrypt your data in one clic, it’s just easy
• parental control allows you now to check not only web sites but also applications used by your children
• configure your network profile and switch from home to work in a clic
• smart desktop makes your desktop clever: ginkgo helps you to manage your data in a very efficient way
• discover one of the largest choice for scientific and education applications

and many others! As usual this new version comes with a lot of updates on applications included: GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.3, Firefox 3.6.6, OpenOffice.Org 3.2… Choose the edition that suits best your needs:

• Powerpack edition: the best of open source including some complementary softwares (audio/vidéo codecs, DVD reader, Adobe applications…)
• One edition: easy to test and to install, choose you environnment and your language
• Free edition: the 100% open source edition

Coming soon the Flash edition, 2010 Spring on a USB key for a very mobile and secure desktop. More information on 2010 Spring 2010 Spring errata

We would like to thank all Mandriva Community that made this new release possible, thanks for your hard work guys !

Enjoy this new version!

Stéphane TELETCHEA is working in a french research laboratory. He is also contributing to Mandriva Linux as a tester and packager for some years now. Below is his testimony in Mandriva Linux use for his daily work.

We started using Mandriva Linux (Mandriva at that time) in the laboraty for the great combination of an ease of use and a very strong development platform. At that time I was a starting my PhD and trying to migrate from aging SGI Indigo 2 to more powerful standard PC-based computers. I did test other distributions at that time but Mandriva was the only one offering a lot of scientific applications (one that comes to my mind is XmGrace). Perl/bioperl, python, fortran, gcc and libc stacks were and are still very up-to-date but functional as if they were tested for years. This very good combination of stability and recent releases also helped some colleagues in improving their programs (for instance with the stricter checks coming in c++ in the gcc 4 series). This stability was also very appreciated while writing my PhD thesis where LyX and Pybliographer, on top of the Tetex stack, showed no crash leading to text loss. The pressure was sufficiently high in other domains to appreciate this part (those using Word or even Writer can not understand the beauty of (La)TeX).

One main advantage of this distribution was also the availability of the developers met in Linux expo (now Solutions Linux) in Paris, who helped the newbie I was to learn some shell basics, with dedication and patience (i may even have some emails from them somewhere). With patience and time, I became an expert in GNU/Linux systems, and although I’m testing from time to time other distributions (multi-boot systems is a must have), my main distribution is still Mandriva for a personal or a professional usage.

I’m now a researcher in bioinformatics working as a post-doc on bone cancer. During the past ten years Mandriva has proven rock solid on all the installations I had to perform for my own usage and for my colleagues. The hardware platform (be it self-made, HP, Dell, …) is recognized properly and I would certainly need to dig a lot to find a situation where the installer was at fault. For my instance my actual workstation (eight-core using Mandriva Linux 2009 64 bits, raid 1 hardware disks, nvidia card) was automatically configured to provide the best of its performance in less than one hour. The only « sacrifice » I had to do on the FSF philosophy was the NVIDIA proprietary driver, for performance reasons (I need a full featured GPU rendering including hardware acceleration otherwise my work is impossible). No need to say I’m using the 64 bits edition…

It took me another hour to set up some basic servers I needed (apache, mysql, svn, ganglia, mediawiki), since Mandriva provides the famous « drawizard » tools, which allows a simple but efficient server configuration in a nutshell (no need to be a guru there, just use the wizard to install apache, go to the http://localhost:80 page and see « It Works! », as simple as that). To be fair, all the setup took probably one day to fine-tune all parameters, and I’m still improving the setups from time to time as new needs appear. This machine is fully integrated into a multi-OS systems, and serves as de facto central server for most computers (as a backup machine and central software repository server).

There are a lot of Free Softwares available in the repositories but one has still to face the reality and use the best tools available for working. I made two concessions to the GPL/Free world (excluding the already mentioned nvidia drivers): for scientific calculations (some of) and for batch scheduling. For the scientific calculations, I’m using the Accelrys Suite « Discovery Studio » (32 bits edition, version 2.5.5) on top of « Pipeline Pilot » (64 bits edition, version 7.5.4). This set of application combines a lot of softwares in an homogenous ensemble which helps me in getter faster answers during my research. Accelrys does not mention Mandriva as an officially supported platform, but since all my others softwares are working fast and fine under Mandriva, I decided to give it a try first. After some minor tweaks in the installation shells (reported upstream as I do in regular FLOSS world), I’m now using it everyday for my research work and the only problems encountered where triggered by the nvidia drivers (the nvidia driver or the software, you never now), and solved easily by a driver and software update. This setup is now 18 months old and works perfectly, with regular uptimes of 100 days or more (the only reboots were because of power outages or for booting on the new kernel for applying the security update). Later after the first installation, I have been called by a colleague using also Discovery Studio on Mandriva for a simple problem of localization. Yes, I’m not the only one using Mandriva on Accelrys softwares, and not the only one seeing it working great on this GNU/Linux platform (although “unsuported”)!

The second « concession » concerned the batch scheduler: I’m using Sun Grid Engine (SGE) since a colleague had already a working setup and it was easier for me to replicate it rapidly on my system. I’m not using it extensively, but it works as expected and has a strong community behind it. I may change depending on how Oracle will drive this software.

Since all the company and a lot of contributors have given me the opportunity to be efficient on my work, I decided to contribute back by maintaining some scientific projects (a bibliography software : bibus, a molecular dynamics simulation : GROMACS, part of the bioperl stack) and since I’m also using it as my primary OS, I’m involved in maintaining some non-linear video editions tools (kdenlive, openshot, 2ManDVD). From time to time, I help new contributors to integrate the maintainers community, since some do not perceive enough the openness of Mandriva.

There are a lot of « Scientific »-labeled distributions out there, but there is a great one able to fulfill the needs from personal to scientific, to corporate computers. Who needs more? Not me.

Stéphane Téletchéa

Some useful links

http://steletch.free.fr

    As announced previously, here comes the last development release for Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring. This is essentially a bug fix release. Again isos are available on all public mirrors:

• 32 and 64 bits DVD isos and mini dual iso (both 32 and 64 bits) for Free release (100% Open Source software)
• live CDs One isos for KDE and GNOME environments

These isos can be fully tested on your hardware but also on virtual machines (Virtualbox, qemu, KVM, …). You can also dump it on USB key as an installation media. More information on 2010 Spring release notes. As usual all your feedbacks are really important to help in improving global quality of distribution. You can report improvements proposals and/or bugs in Mandriva Bugzilla. Enjoy!

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring’s development planning is on track. Latest release helped to fix many bugs and improve quality of your favorite distribution.

As explained previously on this blog, Mandriva is in discussions to find new ways to improve means for our distribution, its community and its “place” in Free Software ecosystem. Therefore, our planning will be modified a little. We plan to add a second RC release, available for tests on Tuesday June 1st, as always on all public mirrors. Final version should  be released soon after this RC2, with new clothes, but still in line with Mandriva Linux project spirit.

Next stop is RC2, all your tests are welcome, as usual !

Free Software yours, Mandriva team

Here are the results of the contest Mandriva launched one month ago. Thanks everybody for your interest and for contributing, we had almost 150 photos submitted (rules were more strict this time for submission,  explaining why submission pool was smaller).

We had to pick 10 photos, choice was really hard. You will find below the 10 winners. Note that we have a 11th photo we wanted to add as we found it really nice (and it is from one of the 10 winners). Again congrats for all contributers and especially to the winners.

All these extra backgrounds will be provided by default in Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Free and Powerpack in mandriva-theme-extra package.

We also remind all of you of the still opened Mandriva groups on Flickr for artwork contribution in Mandriva Linux. You can now upload whenever you want some more backgrounds, screensavers, themes… in Mandriva Linux artwork group. You can also spread your favourite distribution and upload screenshots of your environment.

Note: To all winners, check your FlickrMail, we have sent you message for your price (Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Powerpack, download edition).

• Michel Guitel

• Sylvain Haye

• Sylvain Haye (bonus photo)

• Francisco Manuel Corbí Verge

• Patrick Douart

• Aitor Morant Intxausti

• Robert Fox

• corman77

• Gunera

• billollib1

• PlahaK

    Here comes the last development release for Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring. A few days left now before final release planned for 3rd of June.  These isos are available on all public mirrors:

• 32 and 64 bits DVD isos and mini dual iso (both 32 and 64 bits) for Free release (100% Open Source software)
• live CDs One isos for KDE and GNOME environments (One isos will be available on monday)

These isos can be fully tested on your hardware but also on virtual machines (Virtualbox, qemu, KVM, …). You can also dump it on USB key as an installation media. More information on 2010 Spring release notes. As usual all your feedbacks are really important to help in improving global quality of distribution. You can report improvements proposals and/or bugs inMandriva Bugzilla. Enjoy!

Major new MDS features for this release:

• The audit module permits full monitoring and reporting of all modifications carried out via the MMC web interface. It allows administrators to know who did what, and when. All these events are recorded: LDAP modifications, all filesystem related modifications, and service management (stop, start, …).
• The new LDAP password policy module makes it possible to apply user password rules: complexity, minimum size, age of validity, etc.

More informations on the site.