Mageia 7 Linux Distro Released (betanews.com) 92
If you're looking to try out a Linux distro that is not based on Ubuntu, Mageia 7 might be worth your consideration. It arrives two years after the release of Mageia 6 -- so unsurprisingly, the changelog is fairly long. The Mageia developers share the significant packages that have been updated below. Significant package updates include: kernel 5.1.14, rpm 4.14.2, dnf 4.2.6, Mesa 19.1, Plasma 5.15.4, GNOME 3.32, Xfce 4.14pre, Firefox 67, Chromium 73, and LibreOffice 6.2.3. Donald Stewart, Mageia developer, adds: There are lots of new features, exciting updates, and new versions of your favorite programs, as well as support for very recent hardware. There are classical installer images for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, as well as live DVDs for 64-bit Plasma, GNOME, Xfce, and 32-bit Xfce.
Open Source News on /.? (Score:1, Funny)
Am I in a parallel universe where /. actually covers gnu/linux and open source?
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Re:Yet another worthless garbage piece of shit. (Score:5, Funny)
That would be a step up from Windows which abuses any user, independent of age.
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Linux is a joke. I've just spent hours upon hours fighting with people on IRC about getting the most basic answers about how you *CHECK FOR SECURITY UPDATES* with a goddamn script and not have to sit there like a fucking retard monkey and manually run commands like it's the year 1920 or something.
Mageia has (and had since it launched, as it was present in Mandriva before that) a security updates applet. When it shows in the system tray, click it, install updates, it will tell if if you need to reboot for the update or not. Done.
If you want to automate it, you can use something like this
urpmi --auto-update --updates
This release does also however add better support for DNF and PackageKit, which may provide other was of scheduling updates.
Yes, it may be worthwhile looking at enabling silent security up
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Some information on the software update tools is here:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Fir... [mageia.org]
http://doc.mageia.org/mcc/7/en... [mageia.org]
Is it good? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Is it good? (Score:1)
You keep at it and don't forget uselessness is very beautiful. Thanks for posting! :)
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It does have systemd!
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Re:Is it good? (Score:5, Informative)
>"Anything especially good about this distro?"
I haven't installed version 7 yet, but previous versions have all been good and have been using Mageia for my mainhome desktop as long as they have been out (and I lots experience with various distros for various roles) . They are more Redhat-leaning than Debian-leaning. Clean installs, good selection of packages, timely updates, very good desktop integrations and visuals.
Their handling of KDE has always been top-notch (like Mandriva/Mandrake before them), but they include the ability to install and switch between desktops easily.
They do frequently miss their major upgrade timelines, but to me that is no big deal.... I would rather it be right than "on time". I wouldn't recommend it for a server (for that, I would lean heavily to CentOS) or embedded. But its target market is the mainstream desktop, and they do that very well.
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IMHO:
* It just works (e.g. wifi and suspend work out-the-box on all laptops I have installed on recently, unlike any CentOS/RHEL release and a number of Fedora installations)
* Offers proprietary GPU drivers during installation (you can say no if you don't want them, and then you'll never get them). These rivers are updated for you on kernel upgrades.
* Has a supported, optional repo for "tainted" (patent infringing) software. Enable this repo, upgrade all the packages (urpmi --auto-update --searchmedia taint
Re: Is it good? (Score:2)
Okay, I'll bite (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, I'll bite- what does it offer that other distros don't, or why is it 'better' than any other particular distro?
I read the linked article and it didn't have a single word about what makes it better or unique or even interesting.
So clue me in- what are the compelling features that would cause me to switch, or even consider it?
not based on Ubuntu (Score:1)
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It's a distribution you haven't tried yet. That's not enough for you?
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It's a distribution you haven't tried yet. That's not enough for you?
Over the years, there have probably been hundreds of those. So, no.
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It's a distribution you haven't tried yet. That's not enough for you?
Not even close. Again, what is so awesome about it that I should jump up and download the iso? Nothing from what I can tell.
I just need a system that works. Mint might not be what the kool kids are using but it works very well for me. I can deal with the burning shame of not running the distro-of-the-day.
Re:Okay, I'll bite (Score:5, Informative)
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Easy to use/install, and stable are enough for me to choose Mageia (or Suse).
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Classical installer, such as Mageia, is graphical user friendly, but let you choose what you want to install. Basically, the graphic installer of Mageia is no different from Mandrake since version, at least 9.0, and similar to MacOS.
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Mageia (Mandriva, Mandrake...) have the best and most complete graphical admin tools of all the Linux distros. By far ! It's probably the most user friendly Linux distro out there. It's main fault is it's lack of celebrity. Google images of the "Mageia Control Center" The closest thing in the Linux world is YaST Control Center for Open Suse. It also provides a very clean Plasma integration.
Apparently you either forgot about or didn't know about PCLinuxOS, which was forked from Mandriva in 2007 (according to Wikipedia) and has essentially the same GUI admin tools. BTW, PCLinuxOS is not a systemd distro, but Mageia is.
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Apparently you either forgot about or didn't know about PCLinuxOS, which was forked from Mandriva in 2007 (according to Wikipedia) and has essentially the same GUI admin tools. BTW, PCLinuxOS is not a systemd distro, but Mageia is.
1)Mageia has some new tools (e.g. dnfdragora) which are not based on Mandriva tools (drakconf).
2)PCLinuxOS doesn't seem to be a real open-source distribution. Sure, source RPMS are available, but in many cases source packages from Mageia are used without attribution (the entire changelog is redacted), and there is no source repo, so it is impossible to feed any improvements back to an upstream distro.
Mageia cooperates (informally) with other RPM-based distributions.
I personally wouldn't use/recommend PCLinu
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Apparently you either forgot about or didn't know about PCLinuxOS, which was forked from Mandriva in 2007 (according to Wikipedia) and has essentially the same GUI admin tools. BTW, PCLinuxOS is not a systemd distro, but Mageia is.
Another question about PCLinuxOS, where are the security updates?
Mageia has https://advisories.mageia.org/ [mageia.org] which lists all advisories, and there are regular security updates there. I see PCLinuxOS has some updates announced (effectively) via blog (e.g. https://www.pclinuxos.com/2019... [pclinuxos.com] ), but a lot of the SRPMS on the mirrors (e.g. http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jus... [jussieu.fr] ) are *seriously* out of date (some software that releases at least once a year haven't been touched in *years*), indicating that there are like
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I'm using Mageia 7 right now, I notice that the Control Center are significant faster than previous version, and faster than Yast.
That's good, but honestly that's nowhere near enough of a reason for me to consider switching. I don't use the control center stuff very often and when I do it seems plenty snappy enough for me (I'm using Mint 19.x).
If that's the biggest draw then I'll pass. Mint has worked very well for me and I have no real complaints or reason to distro-hop.
Yes, Mint uses systemd but that hasn't really kept me awake at night.
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I used to use Mandrake/Mandriva and later Mageia as main system, and occassional using different distro like Suse.
Before Mageia 7, I use Open Suse 15, when the Mageia 6 is too old, and surprise that from the latest previous version of Suse - Suse 9.0, Yast was slow, and KDE was buggy, now everything are smooth. But compare to Mageia control center, Yast is rather a mess.
That said, I'm comfort with Mageia, and still stick with it,
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It's a systemD-based linux distro.
Whether that's good or bad, it's up to you to decide.
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See my reply above for my reasons: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
If I'm looking for a distro not based on Ubuntu (Score:3)
I take Debian. CentOS. If I feel like rolling my own, Gentoo. If I feel minimalistic, there's Arch. And if I feel nostalgic, there's always Slackware.
Do we really need another distribution? Preferably one that is again not packet-compatible with any of the others, so whoever wants to offer software packages has to roll YET ANOTHER one or face insignificance outside of hardcore geek circles who prefer cloning from git and keeping everything up to date themselves, OCD helps a lot here? The distribution hell is already bad enough, and one of the reasons why Linux won't any time soon become a mainstream system, how the fuck is someone who is already overtaxed by finding a Windows variant that's suitable for them supposed to find the "right" Linux distribution?
C'mon, folks, it's time to consolidate.
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Oy vey. Fine. I clicked the first thing in the docs that I might want to do with this distro and found this:
https://doc.mageia.org/mcc/3/en/content/rpmdrake.html
Oh. My. Goodness. It's like we went back in time to 1999. Windows 98 is more attractive. There's nothing "excellent" about this software so far.
You totally miss the point about Mageia Control Center if you think it's main part is RPMdrake !
Re: If I'm looking for a distro not based on Ubunt (Score:2)
Why does having a control panel that works require a whole distribution? Why can't this be something released to work with existing distros?
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I'll be honest though I'm blown that Mageia still uses a traditional installer. Ick. It's one thing that has kept me from really playing with it in 15 years (ie well, its predecessors anyway).
You say that as if there aren't LiveCD versions, that you can also install, which there have been since Mageia launched (well, they were there from the Mandriva days, but they get built and tested on every Mageia release).
As far as I know, there may still be some features that aren't available via the LiveCD versions, and you can/may end up with more drivers installed than strictly necessary with the LiveCD installation.
I generally prefer the traditional installer for installations.
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Why does having a control panel that works require a whole distribution? Why can't this be something released to work with existing distros?
The original Mandrake (Mandriva / Mageia) distro is a 1998 fork of RedHat 5.1 to provide better graphical admin tools and a more refined GUI. Yes, it's the Linux distro for the masses since a long time and it's good !
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>"Do we really need another distribution? "
Choice can be good. And Mageia is nothing new... it is the continuation of Mandrake/Mandriva which has been around a loooong time. So this isn't just "another distribution". It is a stable, long-standing, well-made, nice-looking, good distro, which is especially compelling if you like the more RedHat flavors as opposed to the Debian ones (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc). It is nicer and more stable than Fedora and more familiar to many compared to SuSe. Mageia h
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Choice can be good, but it can also be scary for someone who doesn't know the product well. It's been studied that too much choice has a detrimental effect on people's ability to make one. That's basically the reason why you only find 3 flavors of chips these days in supermarkets instead of the 20 you had a few years ago.
What you get with half a million Linux distributions is that a hopeful Windows refugee takes a look, is overwhelmed by the options that mean zero to him, is afraid to make the wrong choice
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>"Choice can be good, but it can also be scary" "What you get with half a million Linux distributions"
Of course. But I would rather have 100 distros where many are good, than just 3 where all 3 might not do what I want or suddenly went "bad". Imagine if there were only 3 and one of them forced some stupid crap like "Unity" or "Gnome 3", the other "Mir", and the last dropped 32 bit.
My point was that Mageia is not one of those "other half million." If you look at stability, age, activity, and quality,
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I'm currently in the process of trying to find a distribution for a specific application: Easy to use for a former Windows-User and capable of playing most games. Win7 support is running out and a friend of mine certainly does NOT want to use Win10. And I'd kinda like to keep playing with him.
So I spent the better part of last month trying out distributions. Based on ... I forgot to count how many "Top 10" lists. The overlap of which was surprisingly low, by the way. And the depth of the analysis of the va
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Mageia was originally back in the day a deriviative of Red Hat (I believe RH5, *NOT* RHEL5).
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Mageia was originally back in the day a deriviative of Red Hat (I believe RH5, *NOT* RHEL5).
IIRC, Mandrake was basically a fork of RH5.1 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
Mandrake was quite community-focused, by Mandrake 7.x there were quite a lot of community contributors
Mandrake bought Conectiva, the resulting distro was called Mandriva
Mandriva went bankrupt, and the community forked the development source packages and rebuilt all packages from source to become Mageia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
I am still a contributor to Mageia, having started contributing packages to Mandrak
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I take Debian. CentOS. If I feel like rolling my own, Gentoo. If I feel minimalistic, there's Arch. And if I feel nostalgic, there's always Slackware.
Do we really need another distribution?
CentOS isn't suitable for a desktop or laptop, and IMHO, neither is Fedora. If you're invested in the RPM eco-system on the server-side, it may make sense to run an RPM-based distro on desktop or laptop. IMHO, there are only two in the running for this: SUSE and Mageia.
Preferably one that is again not packet-compatible with any of the others, so whoever wants to offer software packages has to roll YET ANOTHER one or face insignificance outside of hardcore geek circles who prefer cloning from git and keeping everything up to date themselves, OCD helps a lot here?
Historically, Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia had pretty big package repos compared to Fedora, CentOS and SUSE. These days, it's a bit more even (since the community situation around Fedora and CentOS has improved somewhat, and SUSE has OBS), but an
Systemd? (Score:3)
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it's systemd
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It's based on systemD.
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Looks like they either use systemd or are transitioning to it based on what I could turn up. I like MX Linux for how it does systemd: it's there because there are packages out there that rely on it, but it's off by default. It's also removable without any ill effects other than it not being there for packages that might need it.
CrunchBang (Score:2, Insightful)
Damn, I miss CrunchBang Linux.
That is all.
mandriva (Score:2)
for any of you that we not using linux in the 90's, Mageia is a decendant of Mandrake, and Mandrake at the time was started as a fork of Red Hat.