Mageia 2 Reaches Beta State

Mageia, the popular community fork to Mandriva, is now up to beta on version two of their Linux operating system.

In early May is the slated release of Mageia 2 to succeed last year's first Mageia release. The Mageia 2 development cycle so far has presented new features like systemd integration and many other enhancements.

With Mageia 2 Beta 1 they are currently shipping with the Linux 3.2.6 kernel (though this will be bumped to Linux 3.3 before final), a switch to dracut as their default initrd tool, better systemd support, KDE SC 4.8.0, GNOME 3.3.x, and many window management options. There's also many package updates like VLC, MPlayer, and more. Details in full can be learned from the Mageia 2 Beta 1 release notes.

Other information on Mageia 2 Beta 1 can be learned from the release announcement. There's 10 (ten!) different LiveCD versions available for the various desktop environment options while having two DVD options (32-bit vs. 64-bit).