Mandriva Joins Ubuntu With a Linux For Netbooks

Slatterz writes "Linux publisher Mandriva has unveiled a version of its platform designed specifically for the new breed of mini laptops. Mandriva Mini features a fast boot-up, comprehensive connectivity support and multimedia codecs, and is adapted to work on key netbook platforms such as Intel's Atom. Mandriva previously offered a customised version of its 2008 Spring release for the Asus Eee PC, and was a distributor of Linux for Intel's Classmate PC initiative."

The final frontier

[prayag]

The final frontier for OSes is netbooks and smartphones. Everyone has to go there if they want good growth. The smart phone war is a 4 way contest between Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone with only (hopefully) Linux based contest coming from (yet unreleased) Android.
So, as far as the OSes go the only open race is in the netbooks and it is good to see Linux distros coming good in this category.

Mandriva Spring 08

[FiveDozenWhales]

Mandriva touted their Spring 08 release as being perfectly suited for the EEE. The only problem was that the partitioning step of the installation only provided journaling file systems; EXT2 was not an option, and with the limited number of write cycles with the SSD in some models, you want to avoid any unnecessary writes. I hope this new release allows EXT2!

Re:Mandriva usage multiplication

[AxeTheMax]

Mandriva is based in France, and much of its userbase is French, and other non-English speaking languages. (As you find out if you search for help on it and keep turning up non-English pages.)

I suspect that Distrowatch which AFAIK has no non-English pages will show a lower hit count for such distros. Is there any other good reason for the now dated but English based relative of Mandriva, that is PCLinuxOS, to show a higher hit count?

Re:All distros can be modifed for a 'netbook'

[AdamWill]

Which, to note for the record, is a project of a Mandriva developer. :) If you read westyvw's link you'll know, but to explain it in this thread - netbook customized distros do not achieve fast boot by cutting services from a traditional SysV init, that doesn't get you anywhere enough gain. They use completely customized fast initialization systems. finit is a re-implementation of the one found in the Xandros distro on the Eee; Claudio Matsuoka, one of our developers, first reimplemented fastinit and is now working to improve it and make it more generic so it can be used on multiple systems rather than being tailored specifically to the Eee.