Mailing the story:

Kicking off the 2008.1 development cycle in earnest, the first alpha is here. This alpha features X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8, KDE 4.0 RC2 (in /contrib), GNOME 2.21, kernel 2.6.24, OpenOffice.org 2.3, new NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, PulseAudio by default and more. Despite being a first alpha, it is also in a fairly stable and reliable state. Check out the Mandriva 2008.1 Alpha 1 screenshots by The Coding Studio.