While Mandriva's management is still contemplating the future of the distribution, the community has started work on the next release. On the project's wiki, a "Development Community Draft" for the Mandriva 2012 release has been created and work is ongoing, including a tentative schedule with a first Technology Preview expected 31 May.

Since the development is not an official effort endorsed by the Mandriva project management, the wiki states that the page in question "is still waiting for official approbation for being filled" and that no offical roadmap for development of Mandriva 2012 exists. The developers have apparently decided to move forward without the project's leadership "in order to keep people stimulated to contribute". Mandriva was forked in 2010 to create the Mageia community distribution and that project is rapidly approaching its second release. Another fork, from the Russian company ROSA, has just announced the release of its latest version, named ROSA Marathon 2012.

Changes proposed in the community draft include a change from GLIBC to EGLIBC, the creation of an easy to use recovery tool to fix boot failures and the inclusion of Bumblebee to better support systems with NVIDIA's Optimus technology. If the community effort is successful, Mandriva 2012 would be released some time this year.

(fab)