OpenMandriva Goes Into Alpha Form, Russian-Based

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenMandriva Goes Into Alpha Form, Russian-Based

The first alpha release of OpenMandriva Linux is now available. This new OpenMandriva distribution is derived from the Russian-based ROSA Linux distribution, which in turn was forked from mainline Mandriva last year...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTM5MjA

[Ericg]

....We have a fork of a fork of a dead project...? All of ROSA's changers are available to other distros anyway...so why do we have this?

[GreatEmerald]

I don't get it either. The whole deal with Mandriva SA was done a while ago and the result was Mageia. Why do we have this new distribution that has the exact same goals as Mageia? The only difference that I can see is in their governing body, where OpenMandriva tries to sound all posh and promote it everywhere, while Mageia just has it doing actual practical things in the mean while.

[timofonic]

I don't get it either. The whole deal with Mandriva SA was done a while ago and the result was Mageia. Why do we have this new distribution that has the exact same goals as Mageia? The only difference that I can see is in their governing body, where OpenMandriva tries to sound all posh and promote it everywhere, while Mageia just has it doing actual practical things in the mean while.

I hope all these projects finally merge in a Foundation-powered common one, with different "forks" or teams for each Destkop Environement.

This way, Ubuntu could get some decent competitor in the future that isn't corporate-powered. Just Like Firefox vs Chrome

[flecht]

Ubuntu could get some decent competitor in the future that isn't corporate-powered. Just Like Firefox vs Chrome

Keep in mind that Firefox is losing its ground to Chrome.

[Ericg]

Keep in mind that Firefox is losing its ground to Chrome.

Only because of the abortion known as Flash.. With the explosion of mobile devices, and Flash not supporting them, HTML5 has gotten a nice kick in the pants on adoption

[Serge]

....We have a fork of a fork of a dead project...? All of ROSA's changers are available to other distros anyway...so why do we have this?

As I understand it, Mandriva the distro never really died, it just stopped being developed by Mandriva the company. This project is the continuation of something that never officially died. That's the best explanation that I can wrap my mind around. I agree that this seems extremely redundant considering that Mageia has been successful with similar goals.

Why fork off ROSA: Because Mandriva had been dormant for a long time and ROSA presents a more current Mandriva-like base.

Why the name change: Because Mandriva the company is still around.

[duby229]

I still remember walking into our local BestBuy store on it's Grand Opening day.... Looking at it's OS selection of Mandrake, SuSe, RedHat, Windows, and even BeOS. (I even bought a copy of Mandrake that day) Not anymore. The only boxes on the shelf nowadays are Windows.

[smitty3268]

Keep in mind that Firefox is losing its ground to Chrome.

False. Firefox has been steady for quite a while. Chrome used to be growing higher and at one point came close to matching firefox, but for the last year they've been losing users. IE has been gaining them back.