Customers and partners can sometimes make a difference. In accordance with their feedback and Mandriva's analysis of the overall advantages and drawbacks of the longer development schedule, Mandriva decided to adjust the life cycle of the consumer oriented products to a shorter 6 month period.
Mandriva corporate product line will keep on its 18-24 months rhythm, with a standard 5-year support lifetime. Mandriva's base system life cycle also remains the same: it has been decided to keep a stable kernel foundation for a full year, to ease the work of ISVs and hardware vendors. This yearly kernel foundation is used by all Mandriva products, and is updated each quarter to support new devices.
"With this updated release schedule, we will keep on introducing the latesttechnologies from the community to provide a really fresh and up-to-date
distribution to all the Linux and free software enthusiasts, and by preserving our yearly base system release cycle, we will continue to provide a solid and stable operating system for Linux newcomers and for partners such as ISVs or hardware vendors," explains David Barth, CTO of Mandriva.
This spring, Mandriva users will enjoy a new version of Mandriva Linux. Built on the current Mandriva development branch, this new version will provide up-to-date and newly released open source software. Also expect some new breakthrough technology, to be announced shortly. The name for this new version is Mandriva Spring. It will be available in the following editions:
* Free (the purely free Mandriva Linux)
* One (Live/Install CD)
* Discovery (Live/Install DVD for beginners)
* Powerpack (for power users)
* Powerpack+ (for SOHO)