Mageia 3 Released 89
Freshly Exhumed writes "Forked from Mandriva Linux back in 2010, Mageia Linux has hit a new release milestone. Trish at the Mageia blog announces: 'All grown up and ready to go dancing: Mageia 3's out! We still can't believe how much fun it is to make Mageia together, and we've been doing it for two and a half years. For people who can't wait, get it here; release notes are here. To upgrade from Mageia 2, see here.'" Adds reader hduff: "It offers cutting edge and stable versions of your favorite applications and desktop environments as well as a version of the STEAM gaming software."
Sounds like a game name (Score:1, Interesting)
Am I the only one who thought this was the name of a game?
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Same here, though it's probably because I personally prefer the Debian area of the Linux family tree (currently Mint (Xfce) on Desktops and Debian on servers).
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Hell, half the time I don't know if they have a new release, or if a new rapper busted out on the scene...
Crunchbang [distrowatch.com] rocks!
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Not sure if bad joke or moron.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cotCMqw1hrg&feature=player_detailpage#t=362s [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cotCMqw1hrg&feature=player_detailpage#t=619s [youtube.com]
The man from Mars is eating cars (Score:2)
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Get your head out of your ass before you step on your soapbox.
I simply don't keep track of all the distros out there because I have decided on ones I prefer.
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I personally prefer the RedHat area of the Linux family tree (currently Fedora on Desktops and RHEL/CentOS on servers).
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Springdale/PUIAS, man. The RHEL clone without the huffing and puffing.
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I personally prefer the RedHat area of the Linux family tree
If this Mageia thingy is a descendant of Mandriva, which was a descendant of Mandrake, then you would presumably be using rpm anyway, so there should be plenty of common ground.
I tried out a few rpm-based distros back in the '90s, and while they usually functioned pretty much OK, I preferred (and still do) the simple Slackware "YAFIYGI" (You Asked For It, You Got It) approach with its simple *.t?z packaging.
The core packages just give you a world to stand on while you use the One True Package System fo
Re:Sounds like a game name (Score:5, Funny)
All went down the drain when they changed the name from mystical "Mandrake" to "Mandriva", which sounds like the name of a night club for french gay vampires.
Re:Sounds like a game name (Score:5, Funny)
"Mandriva", which sounds like the name of a night club for french gay vampires.
Still a better love story than Twi...actually, that's almost the same story.
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What possesses a distro to do this? Sure, the name SHOULD be a minor thing, but it isn't really minor.
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What possesses a distro to do this? Sure, the name SHOULD be a minor thing, but it isn't really minor.
all the cool normal names are already taken.
so it was either mandriva, acorn or the gruntmaster 6000 that they had to change to.
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They would've called it Tasticles, but that sounds too much like those frozen Rocky Mountain Oysters on a stick.
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From what I remember they were looking at getting sued by the family of Mandrake the magician and when they merged with connectiva, it was the perfect time for a name change.
LK
Re:Sounds like a game name (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering Mandrake is a comic character, that's quite an achievement! ;)
But you're right, it was because of a lawsuit from the Hearst Corporation (their comic subsidiary also holds the rights to The Phantom, Flash Gordon, Popeye and a ton of other classic stuff).
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I should have taken the time to Google it but yes, it was pretty obvious that they were intruding on someone else's trademarked material.
LK
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It sure as BLOODY HELL isn't obvious to me. See above. If you mean that using a little magician icon was where the infringement occurred, surely that could have been trivially changed without changing the name of the distro.
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OK. So why would the distribution named Mandrake use a top hat and magic wand as their logo as well as producing a tool called Lothar (Mandrake's in comic friend) if they weren't referencing the comic book character with their efforts?
LK
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Wouldn't the EFF have something to say (i.e., DO!) about a frivolous suit like that? A mandrake is a particular plant of the nightshade family. Hearst can maybe register the name as a trademark in a particular limited context such as comic strips, but not throughout the entire spectrum of commerce. Sheesh.
Do we really think that because Dial Soap is a trademark, nobody can refer to instrument indicators as "dials", or that nobody can set up the Ame Speedometer Dial company?
Story behind the name (Score:3)
All went down the drain when they changed the name from mystical "Mandrake" to "Mandriva", which sounds like the name of a night club for french gay vampires.
They had to change from Mandrake for copyright reasons. At the same time, they acquired a "-iva" named Brazian distro and combined the names. When the asshats running Mandriva were about to tank the distro, many developers jumped ship and named the new spinoff Mageia, carrying on the Mandrake-ish "magic" theme. None of them ever claimed to be marketing geniuses and histiory has validdated that. It's a shame for such a good, solid distro.
Here's some more background on what makes Mageia unique.
http://maximumh [blogspot.com]
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Wasn't that a recent movie franchise?
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I've got a mangina. I'm old Greeeeg!
For the humor impaired
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxiVLNA3F7w [youtube.com]
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I'm sick of the names, actually, but at least it's "Mageia 3" and not some totally new name, like everybody else seems to be doing. I guess it's hip and cool to give names like Ubuntu does, but I don't care enough to remember the names - if you're going to call it "dumbass dingo," fine, but tell me what version you're actually talking about or it's nonsense.
I used Mandrake way back when, but right now I use Ubuntu - although I used straight Debian, too, for a while. I'm just wondering "Why Mageia," and I
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At the time, Mandriva was in serious financial trouble (but then, when was it ever not so?). And they had just announced yet another change in direction.
Mandriva seemed directionless, etc... so the Mageia team forked.
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I thought of the cross dressing matriarch in a new generation of black exploitation films.
LK
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Some people are happy to make something useful and find that activity to be great and interesting. Maybe your definition of fun include "posting snarky comment under no one name on a web site", and yet, that's your choice ( albeit a less weird one, everybody does it, so I can see why you think the easy way is much funnier ).
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Especially now some core KDE development is paid for by Blue Shell in stead of Canonical things are even better.
Re:what is the point of forking a distro ? (Score:5, Informative)
I may be wrong, but I think the french-based original Mandriva was almost dying one year ago, for various reasons among which a basic economic one (founders split and close to bankrupcy, not reactive...). they apparently turned to other customers than the average end-user.
I did use Mandriva seriously 3 years ago then dropped it on the occasion of an update deleting everything and not recovering from the backup...
Mandriva was cooler than Ubuntu, actually automating many hardware handling, and less hegemonic -I'm going to look seriously into Mageia, yes.
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I may be wrong, but I think the french-based original Mandriva was almost dying one year ago
You aren't wrong, and neither is the symptom very new. I seem to remember the more originally original Mandrake begging for donations to keep it afloat back in 2001. Maybe I'm blind or stupid, but if they can keep dying for that long, there must be a workable business model in that.
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There are so many forks to so many distros out there, the goal of getting a lot of people to coalesce around one distro so Linux can gain some momentum becomes a pipe dream. (as if it wasn't already)
I think it's probably a case of egos more than anything
Re:what is the point of forking a distro ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Share and enjoy.
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Your problem is assuming that the linux community wants all distributions (or even applications) to consolidate.
We don't.
Re:what is the point of forking a distro ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some do, obviously. There is value to consolidation.
The key question here is "what is the point?" If there is a point, then that point is the answer. If there isn't a point. Then indeed the distro is nothing but another point in the charts of desktop Linux fragmentation. It is bad for desktop Linux as a whole, it makes Linux less attractive as a platform.
On the other hand desktop Linux is so fragmented already that it's nothing serious, and the Mageia are having so much fun by their own admition, that Mageia turns out to be a positive thing overall.
Now if the Mageia guys could have fun making a better interface for the GIMP or optimizing LibreOffice, that would be much better for desktop Linux. But you can't choose what makes you have fun.
The point of forking? In a word. Freedom. (Score:1)
Distros proliferate in order to broaden freedom of choice. This allows users to choose the OS that will optimize their hardware to their needs.
It is the difference between a tailored suit and an off-the-rack suit that comes in only three sizes. Here, the unique bundle of task-targeted, tested, compatible, packages on a given Linux distro might be constructed to make it appealing for a special purpose. The user can have a distro for audio production, video production. T.V watching, math, science education
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Forking a distro usually happens when one of the people working on it doesn't feel they are "in charge" enough, and they want to be "the boss," so they go off and create "their own" little fiefdom to rule over.
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Forking a distro usually happens when one of the people working on it doesn't feel they are "in charge" enough, and they want to be "the boss," so they go off and create "their own" little fiefdom to rule over.
In my experience it's usually the opposite. When the current dictator in charge refuses input from a large group of contributors, is abusive or otherwise tries to exploit the free labor being contributed to the project. Take XF86 for example and how that debacle ended up. Take OpenOffice.
A lone person not feeling like they are in control enough, as you say, isn't enough to create a fork. There has to be people behind him/her and willing to contribute to the fork. Take OpenBSD as an example of that or Cinnam
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Re:what is the point of forking a distro ? (Score:5, Informative)
The original programmers took the Mandriva 2010.x distribution, forked it, updated it and made the Mageia (mage-ee-ah) 1 distribution, which actually worked.
Mageia 2 moved to systemd (*spit*) but generally didn't break backwards compatibility. I've been running the pre-release version of Mageia 3 on a server for the last month or so (because the chipset needed a newer kernel than previous releases had) and it's been very stable.
Subsequently, Mandriva's management have had a small rethink and are now basing their server distribution upon Mageia (because it actually works).
Of all the Linux distributions I've found the Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia family to be the least primitive and actually work, both in a scientific computing desktop role and a server roll. They're generally hassle free and the update and upgrade system practically flawless.
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Mageia 2 moved to systemd (*spit*) but generally didn't break backwards compatibility.
I don't really get the point of systemd, it seems like change for its own sake. Can anyone offer an alternative perspective?
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On the whole it's also trying to boot marginally quicker, but not necessarily correctly. i.e. play fast and loose.
Let's face it, does it really matter if a server or desktop takes 20 seconds rather 30 seconds to boot if the machines going to have an uptime for several weeks?
Wouldn't it be better that it is guaranteed to be running correctly after 30 seconds rather than hav
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On the whole it's also trying to boot marginally quicker, but not necessarily correctly. i.e. play fast and loose.
I do gather that was a supposed advantage. I've been a bit baffled, since mostly the boot scripts were terribly written. Compare the (e.g.) pre systemd boot times of Arch compared to ubuntu for example.
Why did my arch netbook runnung basically the same services boot vastly faster than my quad i7 ubuntu laptop?
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Except that wasn't the purpose of systemd. The point was that every distro wrote their very own crappy bash scripts to handle starting and stopping processes, and that every single daemon needed to duplicate functionality for handling reloading, etc. And then you have the hack of inetd to do exactly the same thing as the SYSV init system, but dynamically for internet daemons. Systemd started as a rethink of the whole way of handling starting and stopping daemons so that any one could be started dynamically,
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Take a look at Mageia's web site(s)/blogs where the history and rationale for the fork in 2010 is spelled out for all to see. It's been almost three years, dude.
Also, you have the question backwards. It is: "What is the point of not forking distros?"
Thanks to all! (Score:2, Informative)
As a Mageia packager, I can report that it was indeed really fun and enriching working on Mageia 3.
We have to thank the whole friendly community, which provided code, tests, reports, fixes, documentation, translations, comments and donations. Our goal is to make a great community distribution for everyone, with an emphasis on the ease of use and on empowering users and making them part of a community.
We hope you'll like it if you give it a try!
Now let's start the work on support and on Mageia 4.
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As a software developer myself (software engineering for environmental modeling; high performance computing), the one thing I do wish for is more "devel" and "static-devel" library packages.
Which is one of the bones I have to pick with RedHat, by the way: it feels as though they've gone out of their way to make cross-distro software development difficult.
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Well, we would love to welcome you in the packager team!
We run an apprenticeship program to get you up to date with our infrastructure and policies, and off you go, adding and maintaining packages yourself for the benefit of all!
Otherwise, please open bug reports in the category "new package requests", so that we know what is missing for your use. Cheers!
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There is no point supporting .rpm and .deb in the distro. The point of packaging is to be consistant in scripts, dependencies, etc. The archive format is not that relevant. Suse and Mageia and Fedora use rpm, but the packages are not usually interoperable. Ubuntu, Mint, Debian have somehow compatible packages, but it is not because of the deb format, it is because they are all Debian-based and follow its policies.
To answer your question, this is the job of packagers like me to take upstream software and mak
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The biggest problem comes with dependencies which have different names, in which case you manually install the correct packages before forcefully installing the RPM with --ignore-deps.
Working in a scientific environment there are sometimes you just have to do this as the RPMs are only available for RHEL and nothing else.
Testing times (Score:3)
I've been a tester (and Mageia user) since before Mageia 1 was released, having decided to take the plunge in the new forked distro instead of staying with Mandriva.
I think the distro is working well especially considering it's small community. Only recent "controversial" changes have been like changing the log files from easy read text files to binary rubbish, but I think many distros are doing that now, and using the new Grub2 still needs some ironing out of small issues.
Good stuff, would install again (Score:2)
I'm generally an openSUSE/PCBSD/Bodhi guy, but I just wiped the computer clean last week and thought I'd take the opportunity to install something new, for fun. I installed Mageia 2, not realizing it was about to be replaced.
Conclusion: good distro! It installed cleanly/easily, had a good-looking KDE4 desktop with sensible defaults, and was intuitive and easy to use. The DVD came with a lot of software on it, but once I initialized the repositories I was able to find every package i need except one.
To th
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They're also building a pretty good quality, constructive and helpful community - that counts a lot. Their forums are useful and full of helpful people, all there for a reason.
Good distro, would install again. A+
I've used it since Mandrake 5.1, as well as SuSE, RedHat, Fedora and Ubuntu. It beats those hands down for usability, friendliness and hardware support. It offers terrible decorative/desktop graphics, however, but those have been easy enough to change. Their URPMI wrapper to RPM makes RPM useable and essentially trouble-free.