LinuxBSDos.com reports that the first Alpha edition of Mandriva Desktop 2012 has been released

Highlights of this pre-release edition are (my comments in parentheses):

Faster, smaller & much improved installer (I did two installations before publishing this article, and I did not notice any difference from previous editions of the installer.)
Installer text mode is now working again
A slimmer, much improved and fixed rescue mode
Dual arch CD iso image has been much improved with a more complete set of packages
filling it and also LXDE now shipped with it and installed by default (LXDE is shipped, but it is not the default. A default installation of a CD image gives you a non-graphical system. This has been officially noted as a bug)
Switch to Linaro’s gcc 4.7 branch has been completed
HAL has finally been put to rest for good
KDE 4.9.0

Here are some screen shots from a test installation of the KDE and GNOME desktops. The LXDE desktop was not worth taking screen shots from, even after I installed the graphical desktop.

  Mandriva 2012 Alpha released