Is this beta for one of the best community-run distros around a good indicator for the full release, or a serious work-in-progress like last year?
it’s about time we stopped harping on about how surprised we were when Mageia’s initial release became somewhat of an overnight sensation just under two years ago. The release of Mageia 2 last year proved it wasn’t just a one-hit wonder, with improvements across the board making it truly one of the best distros available today. As development nears the end for Mageia 3, we look at the second beta to try to get an idea of what the next instalment will bring us.
First of all, going by the features list, not much has changed this time around. The usual updates are there for packages and the most noticeable change is the inclusion of a graphical boot menu, similar to Fedora 18’s. A fairly major change is coming before the final release with a switch to systemd for the installer, but that’s not fully implemented yet. n Mageia and its Control Center are returning in the updated distro.
The installation process slightly differs depending on which version of the ISO you get – of which currently the usual dual-architecture version is not available. As well as the individual desktop spins that clock in at about 1.5GB for each desktop environment and architecture, there’s the full DVD offering more choice. The spins give you a quick and somewhat minimal install, with a very watered down graphical installer compared to the full version.
The full drakx version takes you through the installation process step-by-step, with good defaults and plenty of options to fully customise the process. There is a small problem with both versions of the installer, though. First of all, they’re both supposed to install GRUB 2 by default, which they don’t always do. Secondly, the installer tries to install GRUB to the wrong location. If you don’t catch it in time, you will end up having to do some creative GRUB installation independently, or go through the installation process again.
It’s a known bug for the Mageia dev team, so it will hopefully be fixed before the final release. At least the installation itself isn’t too time-consuming, taking no longer than 15-20 minutes on a decent, modern machine. A brief user setup process follows this quick install. However, once we were into the desktop environment we were hit with a massive, two-stage update that took about half an hour to complete.
This is more than likely due to the fact that packages are being constantly updated as part of the QA process, and it at the very least fixed some of the graphical issues that we had briefly experienced after the initial install. Some of the major packages for the distro are pre-release versions, with the expectation that they will be final versions by the full release. The repos no longer have the common Mandrake issue of only wanting to use a live CD as a source, so you have full access to the pretty extensive Mageia packages. In our tests, sudo and YUM were not installed by go through the graphical package manager to begin with.
This resides in the fantastic Mageia Control Center, which still allows you full control over almost every aspect of your system with good graphical tools. The distro is clearly not quite ready for mass consumption yet – but compared to last year, it’s in a much better state. We’re looking forward to the full release, which is currently planned for the beginning of May. It’s a development release, which means it has its issues, but it seems a lot more mature than it was at the same point last year. There isn’t much major changing in this version. However, it still provides the easy-to-use experience, but now with more up-to-date packages.
Pros
A decent postinstall package clean-up leads to the familiar and very usable Mageia desktop with the usual frills.
Cons
Not much new so far, although the installer’s default recommendations break GRUB for the system, so it’s definitely a beta.
The GRUB installation can be a problem
The single desktop environment installer is much simpler
A good selection of software is available by default
The repos contain a mixture of free and non-free packages
The Control Center is a portal to full system configuration
it’s about time we stopped harping on about how surprised we were when Mageia’s initial release became somewhat of an overnight sensation just under two years ago. The release of Mageia 2 last year proved it wasn’t just a one-hit wonder, with improvements across the board making it truly one of the best distros available today. As development nears the end for Mageia 3, we look at the second beta to try to get an idea of what the next instalment will bring us.
First of all, going by the features list, not much has changed this time around. The usual updates are there for packages and the most noticeable change is the inclusion of a graphical boot menu, similar to Fedora 18’s. A fairly major change is coming before the final release with a switch to systemd for the installer, but that’s not fully implemented yet. n Mageia and its Control Center are returning in the updated distro.
The installation process slightly differs depending on which version of the ISO you get – of which currently the usual dual-architecture version is not available. As well as the individual desktop spins that clock in at about 1.5GB for each desktop environment and architecture, there’s the full DVD offering more choice. The spins give you a quick and somewhat minimal install, with a very watered down graphical installer compared to the full version.
The full drakx version takes you through the installation process step-by-step, with good defaults and plenty of options to fully customise the process. There is a small problem with both versions of the installer, though. First of all, they’re both supposed to install GRUB 2 by default, which they don’t always do. Secondly, the installer tries to install GRUB to the wrong location. If you don’t catch it in time, you will end up having to do some creative GRUB installation independently, or go through the installation process again.
It’s a known bug for the Mageia dev team, so it will hopefully be fixed before the final release. At least the installation itself isn’t too time-consuming, taking no longer than 15-20 minutes on a decent, modern machine. A brief user setup process follows this quick install. However, once we were into the desktop environment we were hit with a massive, two-stage update that took about half an hour to complete.
This is more than likely due to the fact that packages are being constantly updated as part of the QA process, and it at the very least fixed some of the graphical issues that we had briefly experienced after the initial install. Some of the major packages for the distro are pre-release versions, with the expectation that they will be final versions by the full release. The repos no longer have the common Mandrake issue of only wanting to use a live CD as a source, so you have full access to the pretty extensive Mageia packages. In our tests, sudo and YUM were not installed by go through the graphical package manager to begin with.
This resides in the fantastic Mageia Control Center, which still allows you full control over almost every aspect of your system with good graphical tools. The distro is clearly not quite ready for mass consumption yet – but compared to last year, it’s in a much better state. We’re looking forward to the full release, which is currently planned for the beginning of May. It’s a development release, which means it has its issues, but it seems a lot more mature than it was at the same point last year. There isn’t much major changing in this version. However, it still provides the easy-to-use experience, but now with more up-to-date packages.
Pros
A decent postinstall package clean-up leads to the familiar and very usable Mageia desktop with the usual frills.
Cons
Not much new so far, although the installer’s default recommendations break GRUB for the system, so it’s definitely a beta.
The GRUB installation can be a problem
The repos contain a mixture of free and non-free packages
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