| Mandriva betas CNR-like download service |
Apr. 26, 2006
Mandriva Linux's premium-service members now have exclusive access to the beta version of a new online catalog/download service that makes identifying and installing new software simple for even a novice Linux user, the company announced April 25.
Mandriva Club members at the silver level ($132 per year) and above now have access to Mandriva Kiosk Lite, an online service similar to Linspire's CNR (click and run) application download service. Mandriva Kiosk Lite is currently in open beta testing.
"This new service makes it as simple as one click (plus your root password!) to install 'bundles' of software, such as KDE 3.5 and OpenOffice.org 2.0," Mandriva said in its release announcement. "Mandriva Kiosk Lite currently contains i586 (not x86-64) bundles of KDE 3.5, OpenOffice.org 2.0, GNOME 2.12 and Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5, and is supported under Mandriva Linux 2006 Official and Mandriva One 2006."
Madriva CEO François Bancilhon told DesktopLinux.com via email that "[club members] will have access to a catalog of 'bundles' (applications), and you can download and install in one single click. Of course, everything has been QA'ed by our teams and integrates nicely with Mandriva," he said.
How similar is Mandriva Kiosk Lite to Linspire's CNR?
"[The] objective is the same: Make the life of people simple and easy," Bancilhon said. "The key differentiator is the size of what we manage. For instance, our first bundles will be Mozilla (48 RPMs), Gnome (173 RPMs), OpenOffice (581 RPMs), KDE (748 RPMs). This means our software is able to handle large apps with a lot of complex dependencies between RPMs. This makes it unique."
"From the user's point of view, it's only a single click. From our point of view, it was a lot of work to prepare the bundle, make sure that all the dependencies are properly managed, and that there is a lot of 'smart' in the installer," Bancilhon added.
Bancilhon said that Mandriva is making this available first to silver club members and is still looking for something similar for standard members). "[Later], it will become available as a standalone, subscription-based service," he said.
Bancilhon added that the software "handles nicely the language problems; you just specify your language (or the system recognizes by default what you use), and it just loads what is needed," he said.
"This is part of a two-fold program: introducting Mandriva One as a free foundation for the distro, and Kiosk as a tool to enhance and extend it. We believe this is the right way of bringing open source technology to individual users," Bancilhon said.
Mandriva asks that silver- or higher-level club members help test Mandriva Kiosk Lite -- first by installing all the updated packages, then by visiting the pre-release of the new Mandriva default home page, where Mandriva Kiosk Lite can be downloaded.
For more information on Mandriva Kiosk Lite and how to help test it, you can read the announcement notes an the Mandriva Club website. Silver club members who wish to download the Kiosk Lite software should go here.
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