Mandriva Linux 2011 Beta 3 arrives for testing

The Mandriva development team has published a third beta for Mandriva Linux 2011. Following delays last month due to the developers requiring additional time to finish stabilisation work, a new release date for the final version of Mandriva Linux 2011 has yet to be announced.

Based on the 2.6.38.7 Linux kernel, Mandriva Linux 2011 Beta 3 features a new Dolphin file manager user interface (UI) and a new UI theme for widgets, KDM and the KDE environment. The system panel, stack folders and the system start menu have also received updates.

The Mandriva Linux 2011 Beta 3 desktop. Other changes include a new TimeFrame feature that provides semantic desktop capabilities to the initial menu, allowing the browsing of files by date, and various bug fixes and package updates. The developers also note that "a mass-rebuilding procedure was carried out to improve the system stability for supported packages".

As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.

More details about the beta release can be found in a post on the Mandriva Blog and on the 2011 Development wiki. This third beta for Mandriva Linux 2011 is available to download from one of the project's mirrors. The latest stable release of Mandriva Linux is version 2010.2, an incremental security and stability update from December 2010.

The first stable release of Mandriva Linux community fork Mageia is expected to arrive later today.

See also:

• Mageia 1.0 approaches with release candidate, a report from The H.
• Mandriva Linux forked into Mageia community distribution, a report from The H.
• Health Check: Mandriva - Catch a falling star, a feature from The H.

(crve)