DeviceGuru

A new Linux distribution has spun off from Mandriva Linux due to the liquidation of Edge-IT, through which most of Mandriva’s developers reportedly had been employed. “We believe a fork is the best solution and we have decided to create a new distribution,” states the new community-based project on its website.

“Forking an existing open source project is never an easy decision to make, and forking Mandriva Linux is a huge task,” the team adds. “It was not an impulsive decision. We all spoke a lot before: former employees, Cooker contributors, and users’ communities. We collected opinions and reactions in the past weeks as we needed to get some kind of global agreement and to gather, before going ahead.”

The Mageia project’s objectives currently include:

• Make Linux and free software straightforward to use for everyone
• Provide integrated system configuration tools
• Keep a high-level of integration between the base system, the desktop (KDE/GNOME), and applications; especially improve third-parties (be it free or proprietary software) integration
• Target new architectures and form-factors;
• Improve our understanding of computer and electronic device users

The project is soliciting support in the form of…

• Hardware for code hosting, build servers, and datacenters to host these servers;
• Developers, contributors, translators, testers to invest into the development of Mageia;
• Ideas for building the organization and its processes

Mandriva Linux, one of the few commercially-backed desktop and server Linux distributions, is currently included on DistroWatch’s top Linux distributions list. Like most popular Linux distributions, it offers a choice of installing either the KDE or GNOME desktops. Having initially been derived from Red Hat Linux, Mandriva continues to use the RPM package management architecture.

For further information regarding Mageia Linux, visit the project’s website.