Mageia 1 RC Available, Final Not Far Off
Mageia 1 Release Candidate was announced today right on time. Final is expected on June 1, so developers are anxious for final bug reports. They are particularly interested in the upgrade process from Mandriva 2010.x. I tested the upgrade this time, but from Mageia 1 beta 2.
From the beta to the rc, the upgrade process was quick and easy. The installer requires a lot less input than with a full install. As far as I can tell it went off without a hitch. I got a new kernel and new theme. KDE was updated to the latest stable release. NVIDIA drivers were updated and the boot glitch from beta 2 seemed to be cleared up (or rather "nokmsboot" was added to the boot options by default now). All hardware seemed to be supported properly. It could have just been my imagination, but the performance seemed very good, perhaps improved from last release. Even with desktop effects enabled, it just seemed to fly.
The only changes listed for this release candidate are:
* bugfixes - lots of them!
* packages version updates
* more packages in ISOs
This release features:
* 2.6.38.6 from May 10
* KDE 4.6.3
* X.Org X Server 1.10.1
* GCC 4.5.2
* Firefox 4.0.1
The Errata listed a few issues such as if using VirtualBox, you'll need at least version 4.0. Radeon HD systems may experience random X restarts. The "Help" button in the installer doesn't actually help (due to documentation changes to come). Finally, no Flash included due to licensing issues. See the Errata for instruction on Flash installation.
It appears that Mageia 1 is shaping up nicely. If you like Mandriva or PCLinuxOS, then you like Mageia too. Even if you don't like Mandriva or PCLinuxOS, you should give it a try once the final is released. It's a weird dynamic really - it still has that commercial air that Mandriva seems to embody, yet it also has that community feel like one gets from PCLOS. Who knows, maybe it'll end up being the best of both worlds.
A live image was introduced several weeks back, but I didn't report on it because it didn't work here. I don't recall at what point during the boot it halted, but due to the lack of other blogs about it - I almost think it wasn't just me. But like Mandriva One, it was only available in 32-bit versions anyway.