They say first love never dies, and I guess there is a degree of truth in that. Mandrake the predecessor of Mandriva was my first Linux, and despite the fact that over the years our ways parted, I have a sentiment for this distribution and I come back to it every now and again to [...]

Each new release of Mandriva is called by its developers „the best of all editions”. We had the same situation with Mandriva Linux 2008. But is this really true? Hardly so.

This April Mandriva presented its new distribution called Spring. Despite the fact that it is „only” 2007.1 it has changed a lot since 2007.0. Changes can be seen everywhere — starting from installation through chosen applications till the 3D desktops.

Xgl is a hardware accelerated X-server created by Novell. Thanks to the abilities of modern graphics cards, it uses 3d-rendering, which opens up w whole new bunch of possibilities for modern computer desktops. I will be demonstrating Xgl with Compiz window manager basing on my Mandriva 2007 Free (32–bit version) Linux distribution.

Beta versions of Mandriva 2007 have been appearing for a while now and the final release is coming soon. This short review covers the key changes introduced in beta 2 – the Live-CD version with GNOME desktop onboard. Some screenshots are attached as well