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Ulteo Linux Sirius Alpha

In July of 1998 Gaël Duval sent LWN an announcement for a new distribution called Linux-Mandrake. It was based on Red Hat Linux 5.1 and KDE 1.0. The current Mandriva Linux is a much evolved descendant of Linux-Mandrake with influences from the acquisitions of Conectiva and Lycoris. Duval continued to work on the distribution until Last March, when he was laid off from Mandriva. Since then he's been working on a new distribution, Ulteo.

Like its predecessor Ulteo strives to be an easy to use desktop distribution. The initial release of Ulteo Sirius Alpha 1 features KDE 3.5.2. GNOME and XFCE desktops will be available for the final release according to the roadmap.

Ulteo has borrowed heavily on Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Debian for this first release. The Ulteo-kde "Sirius" Alpha1 download is a single live CD with an install option, like Ubuntu. The website contains a A community forum and wiki and general discussion mailing lists are available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish. The development list is English only, so far.

From the About Ulteo page:

Ulteo is a concept created by Gaël Duval, who has been deeply involved in the Linux community for several years, as the creator of Mandrake Linux (now "Mandriva Linux"), and co-founder of MandrakeSoft (now "Mandriva").

Much more than a new technology, Ulteo is a new concept intended to empower people with a new and more simple way to use computers. More details of Ulteo's concept will be released along with the first beta of the software.

Ulteo intends to contribute a portion of its profits to humanitarian and ecological organizations. We believe that every company which benefits from the market place should help fight against child malnutrition and current ecological disasters.

After an afternoon of playing around on the live CD this distribution shows quite a bit of potential. Congratulations to the Ulteo team for a great first release.

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