First Alpha release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1

Mandriva development team has announced the availability of the first alpha release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1.

Kicking off the 2008 Spring development cycle in earnest, the first alpha is here.

This alpha features X.org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8, KDE 4.0 RC2 (in /contrib), GNOME 2.21, kernel 2.6.24, OpenOffice.org 2.3, new NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, PulseAudio by default and more.

"Despite being a first alpha, it is also in a fairly stable and reliable state, though as always, we do not suggest you use it in a production environment. It is available in Free and One editions, with i586 and x86-64 DVDs for the Free edition and an i586, KDE-based CD for the One edition. As far as testing goes, for this pre-release we are particularly interested in testing PulseAudio and hardware detection." said the Mandriva development team on its release.

Major new features in this first pre-release include:

PulseAudio; The PulseAudio sound server is now the default for all installations. Using PulseAudio should allow you easily to control playback from various different applications on various different sound devices in all graphical environments; The full X.org 7.3 version is used in this pre-release, including X.org server 1.4. This has several implications for some drivers and also for input methods; The latest release candidate of KDE 4.0 is available for this pre-release. It is not currently included on the discs, but is available from the Cooker repositories (which are the appropriate repositories to use with Mandriva pre-releases); Kernel 2.6.24 RC5 and UUID-based drive mounting.

You can download this Alpha release at here.