Mageia 4

[viking60]

Mageia 4 is out and comes with a nice welcome screen that helps everybody getting started.

Nice! The stability should be improved other than that it is a quality user friendly distro, as Mageia 3 was.
I did notice that the Erata link on the "welcome" was broken.

So far I cannot detect any revolution - it looks and feels the same. And that is a good thing. I am wondering why they use Grub as Default and not Grub2 but that is no show stopper.

Mageia is a good recommendation to new Linux users.

[jkerr82508]

I usually do clean installs, but this time I felt lazy and did not want to go through the process of setting everything up again. So I upgraded using the CLI.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_4_Rel ... _.28CLI.29
The upgrade did stop about one quarter of the way through (a problem upgrading pango/libpango), and so I hit CTRL-C and executed the upgrade command again. It restarted where it left off and this time it completed. I now have a working Mageia 4. So far everything works without problems.

As usual with any linux distro, it won't be perfect with every combination of hardware and software, but for me KDE on Mageia is still the best choice.

There are a few bugs that still remain to be fixed, but nothing that can't be worked around with ease.

Jim

[viking60]

I'll have to admit that I did a clean install. The upgrade did not go through because of to little space.
I will have a look at the Openbox install so that I can adjust the wiki - according to the marketing openbox should be real easy to handle now.
As it were you had to do a somersault to get newly installed software to show up on the menu...That should be fixed now.

I'll check it and adjust the wiki.

Edit:
It does not seem to be fixed; the menu does not reflect anything that is installed and openbox-menu is not in the repos (I thought I had requested it , but I might have confused it with Mandriva)

[viking60]

Ok I think this is a misunderstanding.

Openbox standalone menu does not work as intended and I did request it:
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10061
Meaning that there should be a menu that reflects all present and future installed software.
And this is certainly not it:


I think the guys "fixed" it as a WM for KDE but not as standallone

But do not dispear; if you follow the wiki everything will (not - see below) work.

Stupid that we still have do download openbox-menu from external sources though.
I am not able to install openbox-menu from another rpm anymore so basically the wiki is not working for Mageia 4

Looks like Mandriva is a better recommendation in this case - there it all works and everything is present in the repos.
MCC does not fire in Openbox anymore either.

After a closer look; this is way more buggy then by the first impression (I guess Mageia is back to being a pure KDE distro again - that part seems to be OK)
I did try some berserk stuff like

Code: Select all

xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate

but
I'll see if I can provoke some movement on it on the Mageia side.

[R_Head]

The upgrade on my rig was half baked.

No MCC,. No Network Center; the Desktop showed up.

At the end all I did was a fresh install. Seems pretty good so far.

The only upgrade that worked for me was Mandrake 10

[viking60]

Well I figured out the xdg.menu system in openbox

I had to generate the xdg-menu

Code: Select all

xdg_menu --format openbox3 --root-menu /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu >xdg-menu.xml

I do not think this is better than openbox-menu but it works. Software installed later will not appear on the menu befor you do regenerate the xdg-menu.
I have updated the wiki
drakconf/MCC does not fire from any menu or panel in openbox though - I have to fire it from a terminal - must be a bug.
The workarround is to install mate-polkit. Then MCC will fire in openbox.
This was not required in Mageia 3

[viking60]

So to sum up the Mageia 4 experience then:

It works well out of the box with KDE. For that it can be recommended to newcomers to Linux.
It has a new nice welcome that will get every (KDE user) started:

KDE will work just fine.

If you need a lean slim machine and want to implement Openbox; it cannot be recommended. Mageia is trailing distros like Openmandriva and Manjaro by a mile there and lack even basic packages to make it work "properly".

It actually does work but you have to do some somersaults to get there. You will notice the differences when checking out the wikis:
https://wiki.openmandriva.org/en/Openbox
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Openbox

I have written both - and tested that they both do work. It simply is easier to implement Openbox in Openmandriva, and the result is way better too.

Mageia 4 can probably live with that since newcomers do not start with Openbox anyway, but they will have to accept that they are taking the back seat here.

And I am not a newcomer but the process of finding out how to set up Openbox frustrated the hell out of me in Mageia 4.
(My research is in the Wiki so it should be easier now).

Also my humble (Berserk) requests to improve the Mageia Openbox experience in Bugzilla have been closed as wontfix at some point because there was a "better" solution.

So my attempts to contribute have been rather put off. In Openmandriva I the bugs I reported and software requests all were fixed within 24 h by my favorite guru (crisb) over there.

And they have a great Openbox to show for it (in all modesty )

Mageia 4 is good with KDE. According to jkerr it is good with xfce4. It is bad with WM's like e17 and Openbox.
(I had to install mate-polkit to get the admin prompt - in order to fire drakconf etc.)
I have not set up a LAMP server in Mageia 4 but I will anticipate that it is as good as Mageia 3 was - which was very good.

So there you have my experience with Mageia 4.

If I will use it now?

Nope
It has no rolling release ( I try to avoid installing every 6 months) and lacks the flexibility of Manjaro which is also newbie friendly.
I did install Mageia on my old mothers lap though so I have to stay updated

[R_Head]

I wish Mageia was a rolling distro.

To me is I rather install/upgrade every 3 years or so and have updates in between.

Never understood what is so big in the Linux communtity to release a new version so frequent.

Every new Linux release is not an easy one; 80% of the time I have to format/reload the Root.
If I do an update takes forever and most of the time is half baked.

[viking60]

I hear you!
So I went for Manjaro. the only thing I have to do is update for the rest of my life - no installing.

[Blackcrack]

2nd question.. and why do mageia not help OMLx ? pff...

best regards
Blacky

[viking60]

Eh Maybe some of them are ? I guess a bit of healthy competition can drive development forward though.

[dedanna1029]

From what I understand, even with all the flack that went around about Mageia being a "traitor" to Mandriva, in reality they weren't. They actually had a few people who also helped with Mandriva through their last days, from what I understand. In the end, it was to no avail.

IF they have no one working on OpenMandriva, they don't with good reason (but I suspect they do have people contributing; Anne is no super-bitch, by far; I've spoken with her many times, she always spoke of Mandriva fondly, even after she left). Mageia has, at points, had server issues, having to find another one to host their own files on for one. Another reason being, those people left Mandriva for good reason. A lot of them were fired Mandriva employees, and they saw the sense in Mandriva closing shop (which they still have to do completely). Mandriva was a good distro no doubt, but a house divided against itself can not stand, and if any company was divided against itself, it was Mandriva. Now, I ask you, would you want to work on a continuation of Mandriva, another house that's divided against itself? I know I wouldn't.

However, the main question you asked Blacky, is conjecture. I am not sure if Mageia has people working on it or not, so can't answer that. I just see the justification if they're not, and that's if they're not.

I can confirm also, via Anne, that Mageia's intention was never to "steal Mandriva away" - it was too much of a headache for her. She, by that time, had just gained the knowledge to start her own distro, she had the people because Mandriva had stupidly fired them, so she went for it. It's no different from what happened to Adam Williamson, whom I was also speaking with at the time a lot.