Mandriva Flash released, sells out!
It's been a while since we've introduced an entirely new Mandriva product, but now's the time! We're proud to bring you news of Mandriva Flash. Mandriva Flash is a full Mandriva Linux distribution on a high-quality 2GB USB storage key from Dane-Elec. You can carry it with you and boot it on any computer you come across that's capable of running Mandriva, either directly from the key or with the help of a provided boot CD if the computer does not support booting from a USB key. Flash is based on Mandriva Linux 2007 and provides all the features of that release, including 3D desktop acceleration on supported hardware. Since the key is writeable, in contrast to live CDs, you can store your own configuration and data, and you can install additional packages and updates to customize Flash to your needs and keep it secure! You can read more about Flash on the product page, and buy it from the Mandriva Store - but you'll have to wait a little while, as it's proved so popular that we've sold all our stock! New shipments are arriving weekly, though, so if you place an order now your Flash shouldn't take too long to arrive.

Mandriva Goodies store open for business
Have you ever felt there's something missing in your life? Sure, you have a nice house / apartment / cosy cardboard box, a nice car / nice bicycle / fully equipped shopping cart, and a beautiful wife / husband / partner / dog, but still, every morning you wake up feeling a little pang of emptiness inside?

Well, we know what it is you've been missing: a Mandriva mug! And a Mandriva baseball cap, t-shirt, and thong (for your beautiful wife. Or, hey, for your beautiful husband or dog. We're not judging you.)

Yes, you can now buy Mandriva-themed clothing, cookware, wall clocks, mouse mats, calendars and even a teddy bear at our brand new Cafepress store. Jump to it. And remember, the main Mandriva Store is still the place to buy Mandriva Linux distributions, pre-loaded hardware, e-training and, most importantly, giant Tux plush dolls!

Mandriva Linux 2007 and Corporate Server 4 box sets available
Following the Mandriva Club and download releases, the boxed editions of Mandriva Linux 2007 and Corporate Server 4 are now available from the Mandriva Store. The boxed editions of Mandriva Linux 2007 come with manuals and services including trial membership of the Mandriva Club and the Mandriva Expert technical assistance service. Corporate Server 4 is available with either one, three or five years of bundled maintenance, and includes one month of unlimited phone support and one year of unlimited email support.

Remember, Mandriva Linux 2007 is packed with cutting-edge Linux technology, including KDE 3.5.4, GNOME 2.16, OpenOffice.org 2.0, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and more. It also has the most comprehensive and simplest support for 3D desktop acceleration, along with many other innovative new features. Corporate Server 4 is a reliable and comprehensive modern enterprise server solution featuring exclusive integration with all three major virtualization solutions, OpenVT, Xen and VMware.

New Mandriva Linux 2007 software repositories available
Following the recent release of Mandriva Linux 2007, some new software package repositories have been made available on the public mirror sites. These are /contrib/testing , /contrib/updates , /main/backports and /contrib/backports . The first two now make it easy for maintainers to produce and users to access bugfix and security updates for the packages in the /contrib section of Mandriva Linux. These packages are not officially supported by our security team, but many packagers choose to provide updates themselves. The /backports repositories form a new avenue for maintainers to produce and for users to access updated versions of popular packages. You can read more about these new repositories, what they contain and how to use them in this Mandriva Club article.

Mandriva to attend Solutions Linux 2007 and FOSDEM 2007
Mandriva will be present at two high-profile industry events in early 2007, Solutions Linux and FOSDEM. Solutions Linux is the biggest Linux event in France each year. Mandriva will have its own booth as well as a presence on the booths of our business partners HP, Audaxis and Arkeia. Solutions Linux will be held in Paris from January 30th to February 1st, so come join us! More information is available (in French) on the Solutions Linux website.

Mandriva will also have a major presence for the first time at FOSDEM, one of the leading European free / open source software conventions. The Mandriva development community will have its own room, a great opportunity both to promote Mandriva and to do some useful work on Mandriva Linux at the same time. There is a page on the Mandriva wiki dedicated to planning for the event. If you're involved in Mandriva development or just interested, come and join us!

Mandriva at Fanny's Party
In October, Mandriva attended its first Fanny's Party. Fanny's Party is a gathering of technology enthusiasts and technology companies held every two months in Paris. The party is attended not only by hundreds of enthusiasts but by industry and media representatives. Our representatives at the party had a great time showing off Mandriva Linux 2007's features to the guests and the TV cameras! You can see some pictures at Mandriva's flickr page.

Mandriva Linux 2007 videos
To celebrate the release of Mandriva Linux 2007 we asked our Mandriva Club members to make or let us know about videos of its best features, particularly the 3D desktop acceleration. They didn't let us down, and you can find some excellent videos showcasing the capabilities of Mandriva Linux 2007 in this Club post.

Mandriva Linux 2007 reviews
There have been many reviews of Mandriva Linux 2007 published since it was released. Here's a trio of them. First up, linux.com entitled their review Mandriva 2007: Back in the race, reflecting their view that Mandriva Linux 2006 didn't provide enough support for advanced users. While we might disagree with their earlier opinions, we're happy to see that they enjoyed the 2007 release. They concluded that "with its latest version, Mandriva returns attention to its software development and re-establishes itself as a leading desktop distribution that can give Ubuntu serious competition."

Next up is linuxforums.org. Their review looks at the One combined live CD / installer edition, in contrast to the other two reviews which focussed on Powerpack. They go through the major new features of 2007 before concluding that "this release is a real sign that they're back as one of the major Linux distributions."

Finally there's Software in Review, where Jem Matzan of The Jem Report gives his verdict, running through a few problems he encountered before concluding that "Mandriva PowerPack Edition fits a unique niche: it makes your operating environment easy to use and configure without treating you like you're a moron. So I switched."

Convinced yet? If you're ready to update to Mandriva Linux 2007, you can buy your copy at the Store, download it from the Mandriva Club as a member, or download it for free from the download page.

Thoughts on Mandriva's future
A long-time user of Mandriva Linux, Rich Hughes, has written a perceptive and thoughtful analysis of Mandriva and Mandriva Linux which has been well received and discussed both within the Mandriva community and within Mandriva itself. We're grateful to Rich for his thoughts and we definitely recommend every Mandriva user should read his article.

The voices of Mandriva
Not content with just reviewing Mandriva Linux 2007, Jem Matzan hung around outside our staff members' houses annoying our pets and disturbing the neighbours until we gave in and agreed to answer some interview questions for him. In the article, you'll find answers from Helio Chissini de Castro (one of our KDE developers), Warly (our release manager, mirror manager and general-purpose superhero) and your humble editor to a few questions on Mandriva and open source software in general.

Updates, updates and more updates
As always, we remind you to keep your Mandriva Linux installation fully up to date to keep it secure and bug-free. Since the last issue of the newsletter, updates have been issued for the kernel, openssh, rpm and php along with other important packages. There have also been significant bugfixes for webmin, the menu system, gnuplot and more. Also, as mentioned above, a /updates repository is now available for the contrib section of Mandriva Linux, which does not benefit from official security updates issued by our security team. These updates are not guaranteed and are issued by the package maintainers, but they also help resolve security issues and bugs. You can read about the available contrib updates and how to install them in the Mandriva Linux 2007 Errata page.

Remember, use Mandriva Update to download and install your updated packages. The Mandriva Online update notification and automatic installation service is unfortunately not working with Mandriva Linux 2007 at the moment: we are working on resolving this problem as soon as we can. Until then, we recommend you use Mandriva Update directly, as explained here.