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Mageia 3 Released
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."
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.
Herve S.
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.
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
"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.
Each Linux distribution is a different business entity, with different customers. Do you really believe that there should be only one Sirius Cybernetics Corporation that makes everything (badly)?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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.
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.
But... the future refused to change.
The reason for the fork was the Mandriva fired all their French developers, moved production to a cheaper country and then totally broke the distribution (Mandriva 2011.0).
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.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
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.
Especially now some core KDE development is paid for by Blue Shell in stead of Canonical things are even better.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
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.
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
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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).
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://maximumhoyt.blogspot.com/2013/01/mageia3-beta-vs-fedora18.html
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert