The One edition of Mandriva Linux is a single LiveCD that can be installed on hard disk.

A Live CD is an operating system that can boot and run directly from an optical disc without installing any software or touching the hard disks of the system it's booted on. You can use the Live system to give the distribution a test run; you can also install Mandriva Linux from the Live CD to your hard disk.

You can boot Mandriva One in "Live" mode to try it, just load the CD into your optical drive and boot the machine (you may need to change the boot sequence in your MOBO's BIOS to make the CD/DVD drive the first boot device). After you use Mandriva One, if you want to return to your system (which is kept intact as the Live system doesn't change anything in it), simply restart the system from the desktop environment that's running and remove the CD from the drive when prompted to do so: you will see that nothing has been changed!

If you like Mandriva, you can install it on your hard disk and you will benefit from enhanced performance (the system will be considerably faster running after installing it to the hard disk than it was when running from the Live CD) and an impressive amount of Mandriva software after adding the official repositories (this is done automatically when you boot the system for the the first time after installing if there's an active internet connection available).

Moreover, the small size of Mandriva One (~700 MB i.e. 1 CD) makes it ideal for users with low-bandwidth Internet connections: it is the only CD you need. You do not have all of the Mandriva applications, but you will have enough software for routine office tasks, internet browsing, and email.

There's a wide range of Mandriva One ISO's, basically there are two essential elements that distinguish each of them: the desktop environment used and the localization packages available on the each iso (localization packages determine which languages are supported out-of-the-box). Some One ISO's use the KDE desktop environment (KDE4 starting from 2009.1) while the others use GNOME. Due to space constraints not all localization packages can be included on a single One ISO, consequently the localization packages are spread over the various ISO's.

N.B. English is supported on all the ISO's.

The latest version of Mandriva One can be downloaded from the official download page, you can select to download either the KDE4 or Gnome One Live CD ISO.