8 alternatives to the over-hyped Ubuntu - covering the always classic Mandriva.

Read the full thing at http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/theres_way_more_linux_ubuntu_8_distros_compared

The KOffice team is extremely pleased to finally announce version 2.0.0 of KOffice. This release marks the end of more than 3 years of work to port KOffice to Qt 4 and the KDE 4 libraries and, in some cases, totally rewrite the engine of the KOffice applications.

Over the last few years, the KOffice team has reworked the framework into an agile and flexible codebase. Our intention was to increase integration between the components of KOffice, decrease duplication of functionality and ease maintenance and development of new features. Furthermore, new approaches to UI design and interacting with the user have been implemented to support the new capabilities.

Read the full thing at

Vancouver city council has endorsed the principles of making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data and considering open source software when replacing existing applications.

"So it's great," said Andrea Reimer, the city councillor who proposed the motion that passed Thursday afternoon. "The local online community was all very, very happy, and now we just have to look forward on implementation and figuring sort of the order with which we do that."

Read the full thing at http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/22/tech-vancouver-open-source-standards-software-city.html

This tutorial shows how to set up a Mandriva 2009.1 Free (x86_64) server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig 2 (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box). This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of Mandriva 2009.1.

Read the full thing at http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-mandriva-2009.1-free-x86_64-ispconfig-2

Mandriva announces today the launch of the final version of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring.

Quicker, easier and even more secure this new version brings you a host of innovative functionalities.

Mandriva desktopThe Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring range is now available in the office format which corresponds to your choice, KDE, GNOME or LXDE and all this in more than 70 languages.

Read the full thing at http://blog.mandriva.com/2009/04/29/celebrate-spring-with-mandriva-linux-2009-spring/

Coreboot.org released an almost-final 0.90 version of open source BIOS flashing firmware it says was nine years in the making. Flashrom offers Linux and UNIX users a BIOS flashing mechanism they can call their own, with support for 150 flash-chip families and 75 chipsets, Coreboot.org says.

Read the full thing at http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6158241352.html

Some time ago, I introduced a package for Smolt in Mandriva Cooker. Smolt is a tool developed for Fedora which collects information about all your hardware and submits it to a central database. On the smolts.org website, people can view all hardware entries and indicate which one is working OK for them. The database is also coupled with a wiki, where extra instructions can be written to get the hardware working. Smolt is used by default already for some time in Fedora and also in OpenSUSE.

Read the full thing at http://artipc10.vub.ac.be/wordpress/mandriva/smolt-in-mandriva.html

A few days ago I reviewed Deluge, a powerful BitTorrent client for GNOME, so today I will continue in the same manner with the latest release of its KDE counterpart, the popular KTorrent.

Available for both KDE3 and KDE4, KTorrent is a fully-featured, complete and powerful client for the BitTorrent protocol. The latest version, 3.2.1, was released earlier this month and includes a lot of bug fixes and web seeding improvements.

Read the full thing at http://tuxarena.blogspot.com/2009/04/review-ktorrent-321-popular-bittorrent.html

The RC2 release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring (code name Estephe) is now available. This RC2 version provides some updates on major desktop components of the distribution, including KDE 4.2.2, GNOME 2.26,X.org server 1.6, kernel 2.6.29.

This RC2 version offers also nearly all 2009 Spring design. This version will allow you also to dump in a very easy way All available One hybrid isos on a USB key and then install Mandriva Linux on netbooks. 6 One isos are now available to provide KDE and GNOME desktops in a very large set of languages.

Read the full thing at http://blog.mandriva.com/2009/04/06/mandriva-linux-2009-spring-rc2-is-ready-for-tests/

XtreemOS is a Linux-based operating system providing native support for virtual organizations (VOs) in next-generation grids. Unlike the traditional, middleware-based approaches, it is a prominent goal to provide seamless support for VOs, on all software layers involved, ranging from the operating system of a node, via the VO-global services, up to direct application support. A product based on Mandriva 2008.

Read more at http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/XtreemOS