If everything goes according to the plan, Mandriva Linux will be the first major distribution to make a new release during the upcoming "release season". Version 2008.1, scheduled for public release on April 9th, reached release candidate status last Saturday, with all the major pieces now in place. Besides major improvements to package management and wireless networking, upgrade to KDE 3.5.9 and new default GNOME applications for certain tasks (Brassero for CD burning, Transmission for BitTorrent downloads and HomeBank for personal finance management), one noticeable feature of this release candidate is the new artwork (see screenshot below). The only thing that remains to be done between now and the end of March is to fix any remaining bugs. Mandriva Linux 2008.1 seems to be poised to continue what the company started with version 2008 - to regain its reputation as one of the most user-friendly and polished desktop Linux distributions available today.

Is it just me or nobody plays with command line anymore.