[Done] Most of our servers will be offline because they are relocating

We are pleased to announce that our servers in Marseille will be moving to new premises, still provided free of charge by IELO. As a result, some services as the bug tracker, wiki, code servers, build system and others will be offline. The planned date is between now and October 9, 2024.

We apologize for the inconvenience. This is a necessary step before hardware renewal.

[Update October 9, 2024] The operation is done, all servers are back.

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I am a translator for the Mageia Wiki – and it’s fun work!

By: Marc Laan
Dutch translator for the Mageia Wiki

To my surprise, I’ve been a translator for Mageia for some time now. And guess what: it’s fun work. I translate English articles on the website https://wiki.mageia.org/en/ into my own language, Dutch.

It’s not only enjoyable. I also learn in a playful way how Mageia works . For example, since translating an article about USB memories, I can now use these sticks to boot Mageia on the go from another computer.

How did I get into this translation work? In a way I had not expected. I’ve been using Mageia since its predecessors Mandrake and Mandriva. Over the years, I have always valued the simplicity with which I, as a computer novice, can operate this Linux operating system.

When the Mageia servers went down for days last year, it really touched my heart. I asked on the website whether I could make a financial contribution to modernize the server park. I got a remarkable answer from Marja van Waes, who has been active for years as a leader and jack-of-all-trades for this non-profit organization: “I would rather you put your energy into translating Wiki documents.”

My first attempts were rather clumsy, but I got a lot of help from Marja and other volunteers. They taught me how to create the translations on the wiki website, from behind my pc at home. Once I got the hang of it, it became a piece of cake.

Of course, I secretly use online translation engines, to improve my own rough translation versions. However, I have learned that you have to check their output thoroughly; sometimes they provide utter nonsense.

Up until now, I have only been involved in translating wiki documents. I don’t have any experience with translating the help texts in the Mageia programs. All in good time, I’m just a simple Mageia user.

In the meantime, I’ve noticed that the wiki mainly contains documents in French, English, German and Portuguese. Articles in important language areas such as Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Bengali, Italian or the Scandinavian countries are scarce.

In dozens of countries, there are thousands of Mageia users who have to do without wiki documentation in their own language. I hope that will change in the future. Fortunately, help texts in software packages as the Classical Mageia Installer and the Mageia Control Center (MCC) are available in more than 25 languages. As a comparison: LibreOffice supports 71 languages and Firefox even comes with 94.

Something else strikes me: there are few women in the ranks of wiki translators. This is remarkable, because I know that in the past women have played an important role in Mageia, for example as team leaders for building packages, in the Atelier team that does the design and marketing, in the Documentation team, and in the Bugsquad, the digital detectives who track down errors in the software.

Long story short: I hope for more translators for the wiki articles pitch in, especially in languages ​​that are currently missing. And it would be nice to see more women in our translation team. It’s certainly not an old-boys club!

Technical knowledge isn’t needed for this work, in my experience. And it’s enjoyable volunteer work, which costs me at most a few hours per translation -sometimes more, other times less.

Do you think you are up for it? Please contact the translation team (Internationalisation Team):

  • Yuri Chornoivan – yurchor AT ukr DOT net
  • Filip Komar – filip AT mageia DOT org

The above blog text is the final version; it replaces an earlier draft, that was published by accident. The first responses were reactions to the draft.

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I am a translator for the Mageia Wiki. And it’s fun work -for ladies too!

By: Marc Laan
Dutch translator for the Mageia Wiki

It’s not only a pleasant activity. I also learn a lot about how Mageia works in a playful way. For example, since translating an article about USB sticks, I can now use these sticks to boot Mageia on the go from another computer.

How did I get into this translation work? That was unexpected in itself. I have been using Mageia since its predecessors Mandrake and Mandriva. Over the years, I have always valued the simplicity with which I, as a complete computer novice, can operate this Linux operating system.

When the Mageia servers went down for days last year, it really touched my heart. I asked some people whether I could make a financial contribution to modernize the server park. I got a remarkable answer from Marja van Waes, who has been active for years as a jack-of-all-trades for this non-profit organization: “I would rather you put your energy into translating Wiki documents.”

My first attempts were rather clumsy, but I got a lot of help from Marja and other volunteers. They taught me how to create the translations on the wiki website from behind my pc at home. Once I got the hang of it, it became a piece of cake.

Of course, I secretly use Google’s translation engine to improve my own rough translation versions. However, I have learned that you have to check those machine translations thoroughly; sometimes those automatic translations are utter nonsense.

Up until now, I have only been involved in translating wiki documents. I don’t have any experience with translating the help texts in the Mageia programs. All in good time, I’m just a simple Mageia user.

In the meantime, I have noticed that the wiki mainly contains documents in French, English, German and Brazilian-Portuguese. Articles in important language areas such as Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi,
Bengali, Spanish, Italian or the Scandinavian countries are scarce.

In dozens of countries, there are thousands of Mageia users who have to do without any documentation in their own language. I hope that will change in the future.

Fortunately, help texts in software packages as the Mageia Installer and the Mageia Control Center (MCC) are available in more than 25 languages, see: https://www.mageia.org/en/doc/. As a comparison: LibreOffice supports 71 languages and Firefox comes with 94.

Something else strikes me: there are few women in the ranks of wiki translators. That is remarkable, because I know that in the past women have played an important role in Mageia, for example as team leaders for building packages, in the Atelier team, that does the design and marketing, in the Documentation team, and in the Bugsquad, the digital detectives who track down errors in the software.

Long story short: I hope to encourage more translators for the wiki articles, especially in languages ​​that are currently missing. And by the way: women are welcome to join our translation team.

Technical knowledge is not necessary for this work, in my experience. And it is enjoyable volunteer work, which costs me at most some hours per translation -sometime more, other times less.

Do you think you are up for it? Please contact the translation team
(Internationalisation Team):

  • Yuri Chornoivan (yurchor) – yurchor AT ukr DOT net
  • Filip Komar (filip) – filip DOT komar AT gmail DOT com

Posted in Collaboration, community, i18n, users | 8 Comments

OpenSSH security flaw fixed   

OpenSSH is a set of free software tools enabling secure communications over a computer network using the SSH protocol.

In particular, this tool enables remote server administration.

Recently, researchers demonstrated that under very specific conditions, when establishing a connection using the SSH protocol, a malicious operator could establish the connection without having the necessary rights. This is due to a desynchronization of controls during connection establishment.

This security flaw could compromise the integrity of a server by a malicious third party.

Fortunately, we were able to count on our packaging and quality assurance teams to quickly take this correction into account and distribute it to users. The Mageia team showed as much responsiveness as larger teams such as Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora.

So don’t delay, and don’t forget to update as packages fixed for CVE-2024-6387 was published on 1st of July.

Our responsive teams are always on the lookout for support and manpower to ensure timely updates.

If you’d like to maintain a plurality of distributions and, above all, if you like Mageia for its community and warmth, come and reinforce our packaging, quality assurance and communication teams!

Together, let’s continue to make Mageia a responsive, high-quality, high-performance distribution for many years to come.

If you’d like to join one of our teams, please visit the Mageia contribution page.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Server failure


As you may have noticed, our servers are down. Investigations are underway. The wiki, build system, bug tracker and mirror list are offline. We’ll keep you informed of any developments here.

[Update Monday April 8 at 15:00] The servers have been restarted. This was due to an air-conditioning fault. The site, wiki, bug tracker and mirror list are back. We’re still updating the build system.

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