Mandriva is proud to announce the release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Beta 2 'okapi'. This beta includes a completely new installer for the Free (and, in the final release, Powerpack) edition, and is testing the Fedora system-config-printer printer configuration tool as an alternative to printerdrake. The new beta also brings Firefox 3, OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta, and support for the Ethernet adapter used in many new Eee PC (and other netbook) models.

The fourth alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" is ready for testing: New features: X.Org server 1.5 brings much better support for hot-pluggable input devices such as tablets, keyboards, or mice; Linux kernel 2.6.26; encrypted private directory; guest session - the GNOME user switching applet now provides an extra entry for starting a guest session, this creates a temporary password-less user account with restricted privileges; Network Manager 0.7 which comes with long-expected features, such as managing system-wide settings, 3G connections (GSM/CDMA.), multiple active devices, PPP an

In an ongoing effort to prevent premature kitten death, the Fedora Project is ecstatic to present the availability of Fedora 10 (Cambridge) Alpha. Test now, make it better now, keep Cambridge on schedule, and protect the kittens in the future. Some highlights: many improvements, bug fixes, and enhancements from upstream; new graphical boot environment; wireless connection sharing; audio improvements to remove glitches; security audit tool; improved webcam support; better IR remote control support; RPM 4.6; OCaml; Haskell.

Mandriva is proud to announce the release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Beta 1 'thornicrofti'. This beta includes the newest release of KDE 4, KDE 4.1 final (with initial implementation of the Mandriva Ia Ora theme, although this is not yet complete), and GNOME 2.23.5. It also uses Firefox 3 by default, and kernel 2.6.26 final. The new beta also switches to using splashy (rather than bootsplash) for boot and shutdown graphics, and adds synchronization support for Windows Mobile 2003 devices.

Welcome to Intrepid Ibex Alpha-3, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.10.

Pre-releases of Intrepid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable
system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even
frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and
those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 3 is the third in a series of milestone CD images that will be
released throughout the Intrepid development cycle. The Alpha images are
known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while

This update brings in the latest development OpenSolaris build 93 and updates to KDE 3.5.9 among other changes, bugfixes. Since this release also includes the latest Caiman installer, upgrades from this release will become possible going forward.

This alpha introduces several significant changes, most obviously the inclusion of KDE 4 - 4.1 beta 2, specifically - as the default version of KDE, and the latest development version of GNOME, 2.23.4. The kernel has also been updated to release 2.6.26rc7. We emphasize that the KDE change is a major one that is not yet entirely completed and likely to cause many bugs. As always - but more importantly than ever - we remind you not to use pre-releases in any critical situation; install them only on a test system or partition, or in a virtual machine.

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS, the first maintenance update to Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release. This is the first maintenance release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which continues to be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2011 on desktops and April 2013 on servers.

A little later than planned due to a number of library transitions in Debian sid, we now have the pleasure to announce the immediate availability of sidux 2008-02 'Erebos', shipping in 'kde-lite' flavours for amd64 and i386, a combined i386+amd64 release with KDE for 'kde-full' and an xdelta to add initial localisations for all currently supported languages. Enhancing the sidux family, an Xfce variant has been added for amd64 and i386 architectures for the first time.

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 5.2 for the i386 and x86_64 architectures. CentOS 5.2 is based on the upstream release 5.2 and includes packages from all variants, including Server and Client. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. And the option to further enable external repositories at install time is now available in the installer. Further arch support for PowerPC, IA64 and SPARC are planned and will be released soon.