One should never underestimate the amount of very hard work that goes into producing a complete Linux distribution. It might sound sort of glamorous, and sort of fun, and I'm sure that some parts of it are - but there is a massive amount of drudgery and detail that has to be taken care of. The Mageia group have done an admirable job of sticking to that schedule, and after the typical series of pre-releases, they have now produced their first "official" release, Mageia 1. In the meantime, Mandriva development has kind of sputtered along, sometimes looking like things might eventually turn out ok, and other times looking less promising. At the moment, in my opinion, they are in the "less promising" area, as their Release Candidate and Final Release have been indefinitely postponed.
I have watched all of this with mild interest, as I used to like to keep Mandriva loaded on most of my systems. To be honest, my interest in Mandriva decreased quite sharply after they let Adam Williamson go, in part because that was one of the early symptoms of problems to come, and in part because his departure left a very large gap in their community. I looked at the release announcements of some of the Mageia pre-releases, but I never actually took the time to download and install one, so this final release is entirely new to me. I am quite pleasantly surprised by it - in a lot of ways, it looks and feels just like a continuation of Mandriva 2010, with the Linux kernal and all the packages brought up to date.
The distribution can be obtained from the Mageia Download web page. It is available as a Live CD image, 32-bit only, in either KDE or Gnome desktops, or a Full Installation DVD image, either 32- or 64-bit, which contains KDE, Gnome, Xfce and LXDE all in each image. There is also a "Dual Arch" CD, which contains both 32- and 64-bit but only the LXDE desktop and limited languages, and for the very experienced and well-connected there is a small "Network Install" image. All of these are "hybrid images", which means that you can either burn them to a CD/DVD, or copy them directly to a USB flash drive using dd. For purposes of my first look at it, I only downloaded the KDE Live CD image, and dumped that to a USB stick for installation.
The Mageia installer will look familiar to anyone who has previously installed Mandriva. Although it is quite stable and reliable, as it has been around for quite a while, it feels like it is a bit "old" compared to some of the newer and much simpler installers such as Ubuntu's Ubiquity and Fedora's Anaconda. In particular it has always seemed to me that it asks questions in a bit of an odd sequence, and there are some fairly long delays when it asks a question, then goes off to do something and then comes back to ask some more. But that is all just minor stuff, because in theory you only run through the installation once and then you don't have to deal with it any more. Once the installation finishes and you reboot (and wade through one more screen full of questions, this time about creating the default user account), you finally can login and get the initial Mageia desktop:
No surprises here, this is a very standard-looking KDE desktop. The good news is in the functionality and device support. I first tried it on my Lenovo S10-3s and I was very pleased to see that the Broadcom 4313 WiFi adapter came up right away with the brcm80211 driver, and the Synaptics ClickPad also worked properly out of the box, including tapping and both left and right buttons. Considering that I have just spent a good bit of the past couple of days struggling to get the WiFi on that system working properly with basically every other distribution I use (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Mepis, Fedora...) with decidedly mixed results, this was very nice. The news was not all good on this front, unfortunately. When I tried it on my very new HP Pavilion dm1-3105ez, the Ralink WiFi adapter was not recognized - which is no surprise, that is the same for every other distribution at the moment - but the Synaptics ClickPad also didn't work at all well. Again, most other current distributions don't get this ClickPad right either, I think it is some sort of second-generation ClickPad from what I have been able to find about it, but still... openSuSE gets it just right, so I was kind of hoping that Mageia would do so as well. That's a minor disappointment.
The other good news about Mageia is the range of packages that are included, even in the Live CD distribution. Of course you would expect pretty much "everything" to be in the 4GB DVD installation image, but even the 700MB Live CD includes LibreOffice 3.3, Firefox 4.0, Amarok 2.4, GIMP 2.6, Gwenview 2.6 and of course all of the KDE utilities such as Konqueror, Kmail, Kopete, Ksnapshot and so on. For those who remember and prefer the "drak" tooks from the Mandriva distribution will be pleased to find them in Mageia as well. If you get the DVD distribution, or you go to the repositories after installing the Live CD distribution, you will find much, much more. Things like the Chromium browser, Thunderbird mail/news reader, Kopete and Pidgin for messaging, and much more. Check the Release Notes for a more complete list of available packages.
Overall, I think Mageia is a good, solid distribution. Previous users of Mandriva be pleased to have a familiar alternative, especially now that the next Mandriva release is once again up in the air. In addition to that, though, I think that users who are interested in joining a strong and very involved community will be happy with Mageia. As I said there has been a lot of hard work put into the distribution, and doing that as a new community, rather than a more traditionally established organization like Ubuntu (Canonical), Fedora (Red Hat), openSuSE (Novell/SuSE) or whatever, can make for a very significant "camaraderie" among the members.
jw 3/6/2011
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I have been following this distro from its day of inception and it was doing good from day 1 but unfortunately the final version refuse to boot at all from both gnome and kde live versions so I dont know what went wrong at the final release that it did not work for me, but im sure its a good distro and will grwo with time.
best regards,
So I have tryed out the Mageia KDE version. Much are similar to Mandriva, but the repository is smaller.
I can not find Gyache Improved that are in Mandriva for example.One strange thing is also that you can not install program/software like in Mandriva to.
You must put in the DVD disk in the computer for every program you want install. I dont like that.
Cheese is in the repo but it ask for the DVD anyway. Same with aMSN.
You can probably change that behaviour with some settings, but why is it like that by default?
Not necessary in PCLinux OS or Mandriva. I must say I prefeer the "real" Mandriva or PCLinuxOS before Mageia. Mageia have a long way to go.
I dont realy see the point to create a new distribution that are exactly like Mandriva in most aspects, but just not as good as the orginal.
i followed mageia from beta version to RC and finally the very well praised final version. honestly, i did not find any thing different between the beta and final version. i know i have 3 years old computer, but every other distros out there worked well with it. while downloading the final version i thought they must have taken care of all the problems but again i was wrong. after installing my nvidia video card did not understand mageia music tunes. mageia keep saying ''no recognized monitor'' while i have set up my [philps 42cm lcd tv} monitor during and after installation setup. my annoyance is why have no person in the mageia family thought of a fallback mode? or anything to deal with such problem which was old linux problem.
I have a wired internet connection and had no problem with it. But in the final version of Mageia many have seems to have problems to connect to internet.
I read this in the Mageia forum:
The problem with Free DVD
“When I tried Mageia beta and RC on my old laptop (Dell Inspiron 5150), they worked fine; but I didn’t realize that these DVD included proprietary firmware. When I installed Mageia1 DVD, with only Free software inside, Internet couldn’t be connected, neither by wire (Broadcom BCM 4401) nor by Wifi (Ralink RT73). The Mageia Wiki says that after installing the DVD, you can download the Nonfree packages, of course; except for the network packages !
To fetch the missing packages on Internet with another PC, and then to copy and install them on the laptop isn’t simple for me. I succeeded, but it took me several hours !
I don’t understand the Mageia policy, why only Free software on the DVD ? You can say: It doesn’t work, but it’s Free ! I would prefer : It’s not Free, but it works !
This rule of no nonfree sofware inside the DVD shouldn’t apply to the internet connection.”
If you are a ordinary user "not a Linux geek" this issues are important. So I hope they can solve this.
i could not log in x windows because mageia keep complaining about unknown moniror. while the mageia graphic/monitor setup picks my nvidia gf600 512mb card, including connected philips lcd. one last thing i do not plan doing is getting to the cause of the problem. again mandriva easily configured the same graphic card without any problem. as a users i expect a finished product, not some linux i would spend hours to make it usable.
Been distro-hopping and multi-booting for the last 2 years watching distros improve successively. Can't resist Distrowatch and have to try every new linux distro. Installed Mageia from the LiveCD - excellent advice throughout the installation - including the grub installer. System is quick, stable - would recommend to anyone.
Only one issue update-grub (from Lucid Lynx) wrongly numbers the Mageia partition - had to change grub.cfg and will have to remember every time I update-grub
Mageia works fine, not many new features compared to Mandriva. But Mandriva is back on the track with a new owner, so do realy the world need any new Linux distribution among the 320 others to chose? I have my doubts about that. It not so easy to maintain a distribution in the long run. And it's already another Mandriva fork to in PCLinuxOS to.
I have been distro hopping a myself. But now I only use 2 system. Ubuntu are the best based at Gnome in my opinion. But the best KDE distribution I must say is the Turkish Pardus 2011, they got a International version with English to. Not so much noticed in magazines but never the less a very professional distribution with a lot of features.
@Henrik_N - At the time that Mageia was started, it was absolutely not clear what would happen with Mandriva, whether it would continue or not and even if it did, what form it would take, how available and open it would be. A group of dedicated developers (and users) who had been involved with Mandriva for quite a long time decided not to wait around to see what happened, which I think is very understandable. Considering that they now have a base release out, and Mandriva seems to be wavering once again (dates for RC and release have again been removed), I think it may well turn out that they made a good decision. I'm not sure why you consider Mandriva to be "back on track" at this point, perhaps you have seen something that I have not?
I also disagree somewhat about Ubuntu being the best Gnome distribution - beyond the very debatable question of how one determines "best", I personally don't even consider them to be a true Gnome distribution (yes, Gnome under the covers, for now, but certainly not at the UI level). Oh, and there are a lot of people at PCLinuxOS who would debate with you whether that distribution is "another Mandriva fork" or not, but at least on that point I agree with you more than about Ubuntu/Gnome.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
@sleepypeepy - I also noticed that problem with Ubuntu (Grub 2) getting partition numbers of certain other distributions wrong - if I recall correctly, only the initrd partition was wrong when I saw it. I reported it to the Ubuntu launchpad bug list, but the report was ignored, like most of the other things I have reported there.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
Pardus is one of the nicest KDE Distros - I think even better than KUbuntu! Luck to Mageia!
That a release been delayed sometimes like Mandriva are not realy a big issue. Maybe they want to implement some new features or fixing bugs etc.. It's a explanation here:
http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2011/06/01/mandriva-2011-beta3/
It can be better than release a new distribution to fast.
Pardus 2011 was also delayed over a month because they wanted to implement Firefox 4 and LibreOffice in that version. (I think they was the first distribution to have those features)
Ubuntu have another policy and relese their distributions on fixed dates, even if it still got bugs and so on.
And about Mandriva been "back on track" I mean they have better economy now with the new owner. So the future for them seems to be stabile at the moment.
I want to make a comment about Ubuntu since the subject came up. If you not like the Unity desktop you can chose the classic mode. Then it looks like earlier versions. I think Ubuntu got the best hardware detection of printers for example. If you plug in a HP LaserJet P1005 it detect it and download the drivers after you answer some questions automatic and easy. In other distributions you often must install the necessary HP plug-in manually in the terminal. So in that aspect Ubuntu are one of the best Gnome distributions.
I wish Mageia good luck to. But in general I feel that are just to many Linux distributions and I don't think all will survive in the long run. How it will go for Mageia only time will tell.
@john3 - I agree with you on almost every point. The option to use a "classic mode" desktop is temporary, and will be in this release (Ubuntu 11.04) ONLY. It will go away with 11.10, and the only choices will be Unity 3D and Unity 2D.
I also disagree that there are "too many" Linux Distributions. Unless there are "too many" choices in breakfast cereal, automobiles, tennis rackets, or anything else you can think of. Clearly, not all of them will survive. But that doesn't mean they don't deserve a chance to succeed, or fail, on thier own merits.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
Thanks for a interesting article.
But can it be to many Linux distributions?
Well it are about 320 Linux distributions already (Look at Distrowatch). Do the world need any more? I don't thinks so. More competition? Well look how many car brands it was. To many, So some brands are gone. Are it any point to sell like Vauxhall and Opel and the only difference is some cosmetic features? Or Dodge, Chrysler and Plymouth. Same car but different names. And probably the same will happends with Linux distributions to. Some will survive and others will be gone. I think if Mandriva and Mageia would work as one distribution they would compete better as two different distributions.
Who know, maybe the new Mandriva 2011 would not have been delayed at all then?
@jha - Thanks for reading and commenting. I think you might have a valid point, but I would phrase it differently. Rather than "too many distributions", which carries a particular connotation because of the way it has generally been used, I might say "more than the market can support", and I think that might be true. But if it is, then as you say some will die out, and that is a normal part of development, selection and acceptance. Your example is a valid one as well - I worked at a General Motors dealer in the U.S. at the time when there were Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac and others all competing with each other, and it was clear that the market couldn't stand that forever.
The situation with Mandriva and Mageia is significantly more complex than that however, and there is politics and personalities involved. A large part of the reason for the split had little to do with technical issues - I would say something along the lines of OpenOffice/LibreOffice is a better generalization of how it came to pass. That gets very messy, and is extraordinarily difficult to "straighten out".
Thanks again for reading and commenting.
jw
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