The new OpenMandriva Lx 4 beta is now available to test

OpenMandriva Lx is a Linux distribution created and oriented for all types of users. The project is being developed by community forces after Mandriva SA transferred management of the project to the non-profit OpenMandriva Association.

For those people who do not know the name Mandriva Linux I can comment on the following about this Linux distribution that ended its development several years ago.

Mandriva Linux was a Linux distribution published by the French company Mandriva intended for both beginners and experienced users.

Time passed and the moment came when it was not affordable to maintain development of the distribution so the end of it came.

Given this, OpenMandriva Lx arose, retaking the project, but under its own reins. And that's how the development of this distribution began.

Over the years The development of OpenMandriva Lx has been slow so to speak, but this does not neglect the great effort to continue it.

Although OpenMandriva Lx is not very popular, it has a large community of users and developers who maintain the project.

About the new OpenMandriva Lx 4 beta

The branch OpenMandriva Lx 4 is notable for the change to the RPMv4 package manager, the DNF console toolkit and the graphical interface to manage the Dnfdragora packages.

Previously, the project used a separately developed RPMv5 branch, the urpmi toolkit, and the rpmdrake graphical user interface.

RPMv4 is supported by Red Hat and used by distributions such as Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE, and SUSE.

The RPMv5 branch has been developed by external enthusiasts and has been stagnant for many years, the latest stable version of RPMv5.

open mandriva 4

It was formed in 2010, after which development was halted. Unlike RPMv5, the RPMv4 project is actively developed and maintained, and it also provides a more complete set of tools for managing packages and repositories.

Switching to RPMv4 will also remove the dirty hacks and helper Perl scripts currently used in OpenMandriva.

Main new features of OpenMandriva Lx 4

In this new build of OpenMandriva Lx 4 we can see that the Clang compiler used to compile packages has been updated to LLVM 7.0 branch. Updated Linux kernel versions 4.20.4 and Systemd 240.

The graphical stack and user agents have been updated: KDE Plasma 5.14.90, KDE Frameworks 5.54.0, KDE Applications: 12/18/1, Qt 5.12, Xorg 1.20.3, Mesa 18.3.3, LibreOffice 6.2, Firefox 65.0, Krita 4.1.7.101, DigiKam 6.0.

For user management, instead of userdrake, the Kuser interface is used, and for creating backup copies, instead of draksnapshot, KBackup is proposed.

To inform the user about the availability of package updates, the applet "Plasma Software Updates" is included.

In the Live-environment boot menu, items were added for language selection and keyboard layout.

The basic composition of the live image includes a KPatience card game.

On the other hand, we can see that the squid installer has been updated in this new version.

This adds an option to configure the swap partition. Saving the installation process log is implemented on a successfully installed system.

After the installation is complete, all unnecessary language packs that do not match the selected languages ​​will be removed.

Additional check of installation in VirtualBox environment: if real hardware is used, removal of support packages for VirtualBox is provided.

It is also important to mention that versions began to be prepared for the aarch64 (Raspberry Pi 3 and DragonBoard 410c) and armv7hnl architectures.

Download and test OpenMandriva Lx 4

If you are interested in testing this new beta version, you can get the new image of the beta version of OpenMandriva Lx 4.

You will only have to go to your official website where you will find the 2.1 GB live build (x86_64) is available for download.


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  1.   leonardo ramirez said

    And Mandriva I think was born from Mandrake + Conectiva?
    I don't know if I'm right, they are old memories.