Looking into the future of Mandriva, Freespire and Linspire

Mandriva 2008

Mandriva developer Olivier Blin "blino" has posted some specs and proposals for Mandriva 2008. Changes proposed for the base system include will affect udev, mkinitrd, hardware detection, kernel drivers, graphical splash and power management. He's looking at iwlwifi for Intel Wireless 3945ABG network drivers and rt2x00 for more open source drivers.

Live CDs will use squashfs + lzma, with a special squashfs kernel module and readahead + loopback ordering to speed up the boot process. Live installs may become more flexible and allow the user select packages and languages during the live install.

Gamers may see a drakjoy tool for joystick calibration, OpenAL support for SecondLife and Wiimote using new cwiid features.

Freespire, Linspire, CNR.com

Kevin Carmony looks at some big changes in Linspire, Freespire and CNR.com. CNR is Linspire's Click aNd Run software repository. It's being revamped as a website with Web 2.0 technology and it will be supporting several other popular Linux distributions. The new CNR will be available for Linspire and Freespire users by early June. A CNR plug-in will be available for Ubuntu Feisty users by mid-June. Eventually plug-ins will be available for Debian, OpenSUSE and Fedora users as well.

The new Freespire 2.0 operating system will use Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) for its baseline, and will then integrate the latest KDE, the new CNR, and the latest 3rd-party proprietary software, drivers and codecs for better hardware and multimedia support. Freespire 2.0 is currently in alpha testing. A beta should be out sometime soon, with a final version expected in early June, timed to coincide with the CNR.com launch.

Linspire 6.0 will be Based on Freespire 2.0, and will be modified for OEM and Retail Channel partners. Linspire 6.0 Final is expected in late June.