OpenMandriva Review, Mageia Release, and Another UT Video
Today in Linux news Mageia 5 Alpha 2 was released "for the brave." Jack Germain has a review of OpenMandriva Lx 2014. Sanctum 2 is out for Linux and GamingOnLinux posted new Unreal Tournament footage. And finally today, Dedoimedo.com has a review of PC-BSD's new desktop Lumina.
Anne Nicolas today announced another step towards Mageia 5 with Alpha 2. She said this release is significant because most package are updated to their latest stable branches and will likely reflect fairly closely to what may end up in the final version. These include "kernel 3.15.6, X.Org 1.16 and Mesa 10.2.5." Some early accepted features include Btfrs as default, change KDE DM to anything else, and "use phonon-vlc as the default Phonon backend in KDE instead of phonon-gstreamer." KDE 5 is being worked on, but KDE 4.13.95 shipped with the alpha and 4.13.97 is going into Cauldron tonight. Other changes include GNOME 3.13.4, LibreOffice 4.3, and razorqt is deprecated for LXQT. Check the errata and download your copy at mageia.org.
Jack Germain today posted a review of OpenMandriva Lx 2014 saying "OpenMandriva's implementation of KDE was much different than I had expected." But other than a few rough edges, Germain says it's a "solid and reliable choice for user-friendly computing." He was impressed by the attention to detail but thinks the software installer gives a "poor impression." See the full review at LinuxInsider.com.
Dedoimedo.com today posted his thoughts on PC-BSD's new desktop Lumina. He says of it, "there's little to differentiate this desktop from many other lightweight offerings." Lightweight and minimal are what he found with "elements that do not align visually in any way." The menu is the traditional type but has very few live links in it. He says this desktop, like many of its competitors, "suffer from the same incoherent design." Later he said of the bunch, "simply ugly and not inviting and even feel technologically inferior." He concluded, "I'm skeptical about Lumina. I want to see it flourish, but I'm not optimistic."
In other news:
* Four great technological advances
* Sanctum 2 now available on Mac and Linux (PR)
* Check Out 20 Minutes Of Footage From The New Unreal Tournament