Mandriva Linux (formerly known as Mandrake Linux) is already well-known as a powerful and stable operating system that demanded strong technical knowledge and extensive use of the "command line"; Mandriva saw this as an opportunity to integrate the best graphical desktop environments and contribute its own graphical configuration utilities and quickly became famous for setting the standard in ease-of-use and functionality. Mandriva Linux 2008 is available in three editions: One, Powerpack and Free, for both i586 and x86-64 architectures.

Mandriva Linux is based on the Cooker development project sponsored by Mandriva. Hundreds of passionate free software developers work openly on the core of the distribution. This open, community-driven development system has been in place since 1998, making it one of the longest-standing open source development communities around. The involvement of the Mandriva development community helps us to make Mandriva Linux one of the largest, most up-to-date, integrated, internationalized and standardized distributions available.

Mandriva Linux 2008 is the latest edition of Mandriva Linux, the product of more than than nine years of continuous innovation for desktops and enterprise servers.

In this release, we have integrated the most up-to-date versions of the major components, with the brand new GNOME 2.20 desktop, the latest stable KDE 3.5.7, Compiz Fusion 0.5.2, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1, the latest Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.

Mandriva Linux 2008 includes an all-new base system built on version 2.6.22.9 of the Linux kernel, with the best hardware support ever in a Mandriva Linux release. 2008 automatically runs on a wide range of hardware configurations, automatically detected and configured out of the box by the Mandriva tools.

Mandriva Linux 2008 includes the following versions of the major distribution components: kernel 2.6.22, X.org 7.2, KDE 3.5.7, GNOME 2.20.0, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1. Other major new features are the merging of the Beryl and Compiz 3D desktop technologies into Compiz Fusion, a new network management tool, and a Windows documents and settings migration tool. You can find a detailed introduction to the most interesting new features, with screenshots, in the Mandriva Linux 2008 Release Tour.