The Mandriva development team yesterday announced the first release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Codenamed Serapias, this release includes all-new artwork, improvements to the software management tools, WPA-EAP support in the network configuration tools and the latest pre-release of OpenOffice.org 2.4

The beta is available in Free and One editions, with i586 and x86-64 DVDs for the Free edition and i586, KDE-based and GNOME-based CDs for the One edition.

From the release statement: “As far as testing goes, for this pre-release we are particularly interested in testing the NTFS support, making sure RPMdrake has no problems, PulseAudio, multimedia keyboard support, hardware detection and hibernation support.”

Get a copy of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring here