Tux Watch

The Mandriva Linux Desktops are one of those Linux Distributions that get your heart pumping and wanting to get a deeper look into it or try it out with your own hands. Mandriva was originally developed by Mandrakesoft (originated by Gaël Duval, Co-founder) and was formerly known as Mandrakelinux/Mandrake Linux later being acquired by Conectiva and Lycoris. It originally came as derivation from Red Hat Linux version 5.1 carrying KDE version 1.0 way back in July 1998. It has now left Red Hat far behind and now comes loaded with a number of administration tools originally developed for Mandriva.

Mandriva comes with an excellent control center from where you can administer and control the whole system making changes according to your requirements. Mandriva was a CNET awarded “Editor’s Choice” stating, “New users, especially those looking for a quick and easy alternative to Windows or the Mac OS, will be hard pressed to find a smoother, easier transition to the world of Linux.” A reason may be due to the fact that Mandriva is a stable operating system that is available in more than 70 languages. The distributors of Mandriva also claim that due to the strength of Linux, a typical Mandriva Linux system can run for months without a reboot and I too have experienced this with Linux on a number of occasions.

Some good features of Mandriva Linux include:

• Several pre-configured security levels.
• Mandriva Linux offers several pre-configured levels of security. A user can therefore choose a desired degree of security specifically for their computer.
• Centralized configuration system, thanks to the Mandriva Linux Control Center, a user can resort to a single panel to administer the entire system.
• For personal use, it comes loaded with Office Tools (OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric), Internet (Web, Email…), Multimedia (Video, Audio MP3, RealPlayer, Flash player…), 2D and 3D games.
• For developers it has Advanced programming tools like C/C++/Java/Assembler/Perl/Python/HTML/PHP/GTK/QT.
• Finally for system administrators and managers, Mandriva’s server provides Web, Database, LDAP, FTP, DNS, NIS, File/Samba, Email Internet, Print servers and Scientific calculations SMP Clusters.

Mandriva is available under Free and Open Source Software FOSS licensing that means that licensing provides everyone the right to copy, distribute, examine, modify and improve the system as long as the results of these modifications are returned to the community.

To download your copy of Mandriva, you can visit the website here.