"What Speedboot basically does is prioritizing boot
processes in order to load the graphical system first and then
continue with starting the rest of the processes. As for EXT4,
though many users are still kind of wary about this new filesystem,
its superior performance cannot be contested. Here at Softpedia
we've been using it on most of our Linux machines and we've yet to
encounter any problems.
"Another interesting and certainly useful feature that will ship
with Mandriva 2009.1 is the ability to look at a partition's
content right from either the DrakX installer or the diskdrake
partitioner. Double-checking on whether you have important files
left is always a good idea, so being able to do this right before
the installation is really convenient. Using the 2.6.29 Linux
kernel, hardware support will also be extended in Mandriva 2009
Spring. Syslinux, upgraded to version 3.73 (version 3.74 was
released a few days ago and will probably be included in the final
Mandriva release), brings many new features and a new module: HDT
(Hardware Detection Tool), allowing users to get a complete
description of their hardware configuration right from the
installation menu. Another anticipated update is X.org server 1.6,
bringing improved detection/handling of input devices through the
new "input hotplugging" system, as well as several fixes for Nvidia
driver-related issues, improved support for Intel cards and proper
multimedia key recognition."