Looking ahead to Mandriva 2009

Mandriva developer Adam Williamson recently announced the plans for Mandriva Linux 2009. The schedule and other details are available at 2009 development wiki.

There will be two alpha releases, two beta releases and two release candidates before the final release in October 2008. The first alpha will be available very soon as the scheduled date is June 25, 2008. As usual Mandriva 2009 will be available in the Free, One (live CD) and PowerPack editions.

So what's in store? Users of Cooker, Mandriva's development branch, will have already noticed the churn as gcc is upgraded to 4.3. There's also the switch to newer technologies such as libata and PolicyKit. The final kernel is not yet fixed but will likely be 2.6.26; with server, desktop and desktop586 flavors.

The technical specifications available in SVN, where they are changed to reflect progress. I looked at the PDF snapshot for more information.

KDE 4.1 and GNOME 2.24 will both be available, along with updated packages such as OpenOffice.org 3 and Firefox 3. There's a new design for the installer, and live distribution upgrade mode for MandrivaUpdate. The package management tools will be smarter about the removal of packages that are no longer required. The Windows migration tools have also gotten smarter, making it easier than ever for new users to get started with Linux.

That's just the beginning. There is much more coming up in Mandriva Linux 2009.

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