I had the opportunity to speak Monday afternoon with the CEO of Mandriva, François Bancilhon. Recently, a deal with the Nigerian government to use and install Mandriva Linux on 17,000 Intel Classmate PCs was derailed when the government decided to overwrite the installed operating system with Windows XP. Mr.

Microsoft is a tremendous competitor in every market in the world. And according to a letter written by Mandriva Linux CEO Francois Bancilhon, it's so bent on winning that it undercut a deal between the Nigerian government and the Linux vendor.

"Dear Steve,

Hi, this is François, from Mandriva.

After a slight delay here is the third instalment of my Linux tour. On Wednesday of this week I wiped openSUSE off my machine and decided to try Mandriva 2008 next. I used to Mandrake a lot a few years back before it became Mandriva and even paid to join their Club but never felt like I got value for my money.

Mandriva today announced that the Federal Service on Technical and Export Control (FSTEC) in Russia has agreed to authorise the certification of the Mandriva Linux OS for all safe and legal use in organizations dealing with confidential information. The certification process will be finished in 3 to 6 months.

Mandriva Linux today announced a deal with the National Commission for Information Technology (CNTI) in Angola to provide technology solutions, training and consulting services in the African country.

Mandriva & Intel presented and demonstrated the Intel-powered classmatePC to KDE developers at the aKademy 2007 conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Mandriva has become the third major Linux distributor to publicly announce it has no intention to join Microsoft in licensing and non-litigation pacts. Red Hat and Ubuntu have made similar statements, while Novell, Xandros and Linspire have partnered with Microsoft in sharing licensed technology and agreeing not to sue each other over possible patent infringements.