Thread:D.A.W./@comment-1970265-20120602192900/@comment-1970265-20120603155036

It's a community fork of Mandriva - when Mandriva SA (the company) got into financial difficulties a couple of years ago, they dismissed most of their developers. Who promptly set up forking it.

As usual, KDE and GNOME are the defaults, while LXDE / IceWM / WindowMaker make it onto the isos. I prefer Xfce myself coupled with Compiz. Mageia 1 worked fine without a problem - even did a fresh install from DVD with no problems. Mageia 2, though, is a different beast with lots of changes behind the scenes...