56 replies to this topic

[raymac46]

This Mandriva fork is now out and I have upgraded to it online from a Mandriva 2010.2 install I have in  VirtualBox . The upgrade of about 1400 packages went well and I am now posting this from virtual Mageia. I'll test for a bit and report back before I try an upgrade on a machine I really need to work well.I probably will eventually switch to Mageia because they plan to keep the Gnome desktop as an option. Don't see that in the future for Mandriva 2011 so far unless the community manages it.

[securitybreach]

Very cool!! Thanks for the heads up.

[jmjlinux586]

Hello,I just installed Mageia as my main OS.It reminds me of Mandriva, which I usedfor a few years and was Bruno's favorite. It is very similar to Mandriva and similar toPClinuxOS.I first tried the live cd, and it found my wifi andI had sound out of the box, so I decided to install it.I like it.

[securitybreach]

Downloading the 64bit DVD now

[raymac46]

I often wonder what Bruno would have made of this Mandriva/Mageia situation. Would he have stuck with Mandriva or gone with the new Mageia distro? He was a KDE guy so the availability of a Gnome version wouldn't have concerned him as much.

[raymac46]

One difference so far: you don't need to go into easy URPMI and add the PLF medias to get the ugly codecs and DVD playback library. Mageia has its own "Tainted" repository.  

[raymac46]

I've decided to download the Mageia installation DVD. I'll burn it and keep it handy to upgrade my other Mandriva installations if I decide to go that way. The Mageia mirrors are pretty fast so it only takes me about 45 minutes to grab the whole DVD. (I don't have the fastest bandwidth but it's pretty good.)

[zlim]

Thanks. I'm grabbing it. It looks like it will download in 10 minutes for me.

[raymac46]

Well this has been interesting. I decided because Mageia was working so great in VBox, I might as well go ahead and install it on my very Linux friendly Athlon 64 X2 desktop. This machine has an Nvidia 8400GS card and was running Mandriva 2010.2. I tried the "upgrade" option from the downloaded DVD and upgraded 1612 packages.   Everything seemed to go OK until I booted for the first time and ended up in the console. No X at all.I went into the mcc from the console and changed to the nouveau 2D driver and finally got a GUI after a reboot. Then I went through the installed package list and found a bunch of old Mandriva kernels and their appropriate Nvidia drivers. I am sure that X was getting confused with all the drivers claiming to represent Nvidia. Anyway I dumped all the Mandriva stuff, reinstalled the latest Nvidia driver from the Mageia repo, set up the 3D acceleration and here I am in Mageia wobbly window land. Another reason to do a clean install.

Edited by raymac46, 13 June 2011 - 08:35 PM.

[raymac46]

One other thing. If you update online the grub graphical boot screen gets changed from a Mandriva one to a Mageia one. If you update from the DVD this doesn't happen and you are left with the Mandriva grub screen and Mageia options. You can fix this by using a tip I found in Mageia Bug #152. Run a script and it's fixed.I don't know if this was a problem because I didn't have a good Internet connection when updating via the DVD.https://bugs.mageia...._bug.cgi?id=152

[raymac46]

I hope my problems here haven't dissuaded you from trying Mageia. It is a very solid and attractive distro, just like...well, just like Mandriva. It runs fast and seems pretty bug free. All the essential hardware is recognized right out of the box.The attraction for me is that it's backed up by the "old" Mandriva community and for now offers a very solid classic Gnome 2.X desktop. With Gnome 3 looming on the horizon, Ubuntu switching to Unity, and Mandriva concentrating on KDE with no promise of any Gnome desktop in future - well let's just say I find Mageia strangely comforting.

Edited by raymac46, 14 June 2011 - 07:57 PM.

[raymac46]

Here's a screenshot of my Mageia desktop.

[securitybreach]

Looks great Ray

[ross549]

Ray,I've been through those locks... LOL

[BarryB]

Yeah..If your a Mandriva fan, Mageia is a nice fit....but without the corporate issues...reading the mageia dev email chains, I believe they even plan to develop a GNOME liveCD....and there are talks on the mailing list about GNOME 3(problrm being upstream support for Gnome 2 is ending)...I have migrated some box's to Mageia from Mandriva...nothing against Mandriva...just seeing where cooker is going (beyonf changes to RPM5 - ROSA desktop etc) I do like Mageia's core development team, hopefully they will get to do the things they wanted to do with Mandriva...and I hope that this fork challenges Mandriva to greater success also...hopefully it will become more like the fedora/redhat relationship.So far have Mageia on 3 systems..1 EeePC 1005, an Acer 5100 and a i7core box...the only fussy one is the acer, but I think that's an ATI issue after last kernel upgrade.  Now didn't run the upgrade path..fresh installs, I started using Mageia back a the TR release(pre-beta), and it has been a blast watching them grow....like the "Tainted" repos ( not the name so much...sound like bad beef) But over all (IMO) it's a winner....

[raymac46]

ross549, on Jun 15 2011, 08:50 AM, said:

Ray,I've been through those locks... LOL

Well have you been here? Screenshot from a second Mageia system.

[raymac46]

Quote

So far have Mageia on 3 systems..1 EeePC 1005, an Acer 5100 and a i7core box.

I have it on an AMD Athlon X2 4600+ clone system and a Dell Optiplex GX620 (Pentium D with 3 GB RAM, Intel graphics.) The second upgrade went flawlessly I suppose because of Intel hardware. Sadly both Nvidia and AMD/ATI can give you a problem with the newest kernels, versions of X and proprietary drivers.

Edited by raymac46, 15 June 2011 - 06:54 PM.

[réjean]

I tried it in Vbox in Mandriva and it didn't have the codecs already installed so I'll stick with Mandriva which I have been using for at least 6 months now without a problem. It looks good and I wish the new team good luck.

[BarryB]

I haven't any issues with the nvidia side (well after beta 2 anyway...) and I think it's an age issue with the ATI side.  ( age as in older ATI graphics chip...)  anyway..I tend to like the triad of Mandriva_Mageia_PCLinuxOS.  That's just me...but then again I prefer KDE to Gnome....

[raymac46]

There is an Nvidia issue where the latest kernel and version of X requires the version 270 Nvidia driver. That driver doesn't support the older hardware before GeForce 6000. So if you have a really old Nvidia card you will have to use the Nouveau driver. I'm lucky so far in that I have 6200 and 8400 graphics cards.ATI has the same issue where anything X2100 or under will not be supported by fglrx. I switched to Nvidia in my older machines to get a few more years of support, but eventully I suppose I'll be switching to the FOSS driver. Hopefully 3D support will improve with Radeon and Nouveau.I've used Gnome 2.X for many years and you can (or should I say could) run it quite nicely with Mandriva and PCLOS. I guess we'll see what the future holds.

Edited by raymac46, 16 June 2011 - 11:48 AM.

[raymac46]

There's not a lot more that I can add here, except that the test of Mageia 1.0 went very well and if you like Mandriva, you'll be fine with Mageia. Probably a clean install would work better for you than the upgrade from Mandriva 2010 - although I had upgrade problems on only one machine.Mageia 1.0 is far from a bleeding edge distro, but it's solid and old-school with all the familiar Mandriva tools at your disposal. On my Athlon X2 system it's fast and reliable, taking up only about 320 MB of RAM on a 2 GB system. The repos are easy to set up and you don't have to go through EasyUrpmi to add the ones for software  that may have licensing issues (like DVD play and MP3s.) I'm going to run Mageia for a while.

Edited by raymac46, 16 June 2011 - 12:04 PM.

[BarryB]

Yeah, with Mageia being based on Mandriva 2010.1, bleeding edge is not what you will see...other than kde 4.6.3 and kernel(and some other minor improvements but nothing earth shaking).  I agree if you like Mandriva, you'll do fine with Mageia..   Not as many packages available to Mageia yet...and that may be a good thing, but I suspect that will grow in time....Don't know if Mageia will follow Mandriva with RPM5 and the ROSA desktop but, it will be cool to see the Mageia community mature and develop as time passes.

[ross549]

raymac46, on Jun 15 2011, 06:48 PM, said:

Well have you been here? Screenshot from a second Mageia system.

Is that Rome?

[raymac46]

ross549, on Jun 18 2011, 10:09 AM, said:

Is that Rome?

Yes indeed. Victor Emmanuel monument at the foot of the Via del Corso. Just walk past it on the left and keep going to the Colosseum.

[ross549]

I thought I recognized it. (Been there too)