Mandriva isn’t considered to be a major player in the Linux world anymore, but it used to be back when it was still called Mandrake Linux. Even more surprising to some, it’s already been different from all other distributions for a while now, as seen in previous reviews of Mandriva like this one.

A couple months ago, Mandriva let loose their 2011 release, providing another impressive experience. Let’s take a look, why don’t we?

Get It

You can get Mandriva by going to their site and downloading their ISO file. You can then burn it to a DVD or write it to a USB stick, then boot your computer from that media. When you first load Mandriva, it will ask you a few questions to determine language, time, and keyboard layout. Once you answer those questions, Mandriva will finish loading and then present its clean desktop.

Desktop