MandrakeSoft announced the availablity of its new ninth generation distribution today. The distribution offers lots of great features over previous releases, including KDE 3.0.3, GNOME 2.0, and XFree86 4.2.1. Leaks about the impending release of RedHat's major upgrade surfaced today as well, amid major controversy.
The new Mandrake Linux 9.0 includes many usability enhancements, including what the press release terms a dynamic desktop. “Unique features make unique products: The Mandrake Linux desktops are dynamic. This means, for instance, that when a new software package is installed or removed, the corresponding icon will appear or disappear instantaneously in the application menu. This same 'dynamic' feature also applies to hardware devices: Plug in a USB scanner or WebCam and a corresponding icon appears automatically on the desktop.”
The new RedHat release, codenamed “Null,” is set to join the party early next week. With it arrives a similar selection of updates such as KDE 3.0.3, GNOME 2.0, plus a controversial blending of the two desktops. This change, known as “Nullization,” supposedly makes the GNOME and KDE desktops work more alike, however many argue it is simply an attempt by RedHat to make KDE less attractive than GNOME.
A damper was put on the release today when RedHat's only vocal KDE supporter, Bernhard “bero” Rosenkraenzer, announced he was resigning in protest of what he termed as the release of a “crippleware” version of KDE. KDE, which stands for the K Desktop Environment, is Linux's most popular desktop, and is the defacto standard GUI in all of the popular commercial distributions other than RedHat.
For more information on RedHat's new release, as well as coverage of Rosenkraenzer's resignation, News.com has complete coverage. You can also find out more about Mandrake's new release at the company's web site.