Linux Magazine DVD

Mandrakesoft recently announced they were purchasing Brazilian Linux vendor Conectiva. The company is now called Mandriva, and later this year, they will produce a hybrid distribution that will begin a new development branch. But in the meantime, Mandriva is releasing one last version from the acclaimed Mandrakelinux development branch. On this month's Linux Magazine DVD, we bring you Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005. The Limited Edition is the culmination of a long development effort from one of the world's leading Linux vendors.

Mandrivaoffers a unique blend of simplicity and power, with a built-in collection of monitoring and management tools that will appeal to beginners and experts alike.

Smooth Installation

Mandrakelinux made its name as a Linux that offers easy installation for the everyday user, and the Mandriva installer is still one of the best in the industry. The installer supports over 50 languages and automatically configures a wide range of hardware. The installation includes several advanced configuration options and a rescue mode for saving the system in case of failure. You can even configure RAID disks and resize NTFS partitions from within the installer.

The Desktop

The Mandriva desktop offers the best of Linux tools. You can choose either KDE 3.3.2 or Gnome 2.8.3. You'll also find OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, Gimp 2.2, cdrecord 2.01, xpdf, Kpilot, Scribus, and many other useful desktop applications.

Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005

System

  • Linux kernel 2.6.11.6
  • X.Org 6.8.2
  • KDE 3.3.2
  • Gnome 2.8.3

Office

  • OpenOffice 1.1.4
  • The GIMP 2.2.4
  • Evolution 2.0.4
  • xpdf 3.00

Multimedia

  • gphoto2 2.1.5
  • SANE 1.0.15
  • cdrecord 2.01
  • k3b 0.11.20
  • amaroK 1.2.2
  • Kaffeine 0.6
  • digikam 0.7.2

Surf the web with Mozilla Firefox - version, which 1.02 contains some security patches not found in the 1.0 version (Figure 2). Also included is the Kontact Personal Information Management suite (Figure 3), which offers improvements for tracking your contacts and appointments.

Figure 1: The Mandriva Limited Edition desktop.

Figure 2: Surf the web with Mozilla Firefox.

The Control Center

The Mandriva Control Center (Figure 4) provides over 60 wizards and configuration utilities for managing your system. The Control Center serves as a central location for configuring partitions, devices, mount points, software, and services. The Control Center is also a source for configuring system security settings.

Figure 3: Track appointments and contacts with the Kontact personal information management suite.

Figure 4: The Control Center is a central interface for managing your Mandriva system.

Multimedia

Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005 offers a rich collection of multimedia tools, such as digicam, SANE, the amaroK music player (Figure 5), and the Kaffiene video player (Figure 6). View your photos with gphoto, and burn CDs with k3b. The Limited Edition also includes the Rosegarden audio recording system and other tools for audio and video production.

Development

Developers will find much to explore in Mandriva Limited Edition. Included are gcc 3.4.3, glibc 2.3.4, and many popular development tools. You'll find support for languages such as Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, and Java. Also included are GTK+ and the Qt libraries.

Figure 5: Listen to your favorite sounds with the easy and intuitive amaroK music player.

Figure 6: The Kaffiene multimedia player is a full-featured tool for managing video clips and playlists.

Server Side

Mandriva provides all the Linux network server applications you've come to expect, such as BIND, NFS, DHCP, Postfix, Sendmail, and Samba. You'll also find advanced server-side security tools and a suite of server management utilities.

Mandriva's Apache2 web server provides out-of-the-box support for dozens of Apache extensions.Another original tool for Mandriva, DrakGW, allows multiple users to share a single Internet connection.

Mandriva Limited Edition

Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005 is the latest and greatest release from one of the best loved Linux distributions. Install this DVD today, and you'll agree that Mandriva offers the simplicity of a desktop system with the power and versatility of a full-featured corporate distribution.

System Requirements

Processor: X586-class or better. This includes Pentium I/II/III/IV/Celeron, AMD K6/II/III, AMD Duron, and AMD Athlon/XP/MP.

Memory: 64 MB minimum; 128 MB or more is recommended. 32 MB minimum for a text-only system.

Hard Disk: 500 MB minimum; 1 GB recommended. Large-capacity drives of up to 250 GB are supported.

See the Mandriva Linux Hardware Database for more on supported hardware: http://www.mandrivalinux.com/en/hardware.php3