This Week in Linux: Fedora, Mandriva, and Mageia

Ubuntu's latest release and controversies have dominated the news this week, but it wasn't the only distribution making announcements. Fedora 18 is running behind schedule, but developers are already looking ahead. The Mandriva foundation has a name and Mageia has officially changed its schedule.

Fedora

Fedora 18 has been in the works since early summer and has been delayed a couple of times. At last count, it is now over a month behind schedule. Phoronix has listed all the delays and realized it adds up to over a month. The release schedule confirms it. All seem to agree delays are better than a buggy release. Originally scheduled for November 6, it is now expected December 11, 2012.

In other Fedora news, the codename for Fedora 19 is in the works. The proposal period ended this week and voting will commence once the official nominees are selected. A list of the proposed names and the progress of reviewing the suggestions are at Fedora's wiki. Some of my favorites include Cubical Bull, Rhino-masked Platypus, Parabolic Potassium, Martian Blueberries, Conical Chicken, and Maxwell's demon.

Mandriva

Those pulling the Mandriva community back together formed a foundation and set about finding a name. They polled interested parties and came to a conclusion. The new Mandriva foundation is officially dubbed OpenMandriva. J.C. Vanier said, "Please, notice that is only the name of the foundation. The name of the distribution itself is still to be determined. That's an important achievement that allows us to move towards the formalization of the legal status of the foundation. Yes, we are still moving on!"

Mageia

Mageia released Alpha 2 earlier this week including live DVDs and CDs. Some of their plans sound quite exciting, but users will have to wait a bit longer to test the next release. Mageia 3 Alpha 3 will be delayed by a week until November 12, 2012. No reason was given, but fortunately, the final is still scheduled for March 20, 2013.