Announcing Mageia 8 RC1

Posted on February 6, 2021 by Donald Stewart

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback so that we can continue workingto get Mageia 8 ready for release.

Mageia 8’s new artwork has also been integrated, the community has made some really nice images, here is the new signature background, as well as the additional backgrounds that will be included.

  • We hope that you like the new look!

Here are some of the major packages included in this release:               

  • Kernel – 5.10.12 LTS
  • glibc – 2.32
  • gcc – 10.2.1
  • rpm – 4.16.1.2
  • Chromium – 88 (x86_64-only)   
  • Firefox – 78.7 (ESR)   
  • LibreOffice – 7.0.4.2   
  • Plasma – 5.20.4   
  • GNOME 3.38.3   
  • Cinnamon 4.8.3   
  • Xfce 4.16   
  • Mate 1.24


PHP was recently updated to 8.0.2, therefore, feedback on PHP applications will be helpful to check for issues. The NVIDIA drivers have been switched to gl-vendor-neutral-dispatch, so MESA applications can work on such systems, with 460 series on x86_64 and 390 series still available. Note that the NVIDIA 340 series is no longer supported. DrakX, our installer, will switch supported systems to NVIDIA 390 where possible, or use the nouveau driver if they are unsupported by the newer drivers.

For AMD graphic cards based on Southern Islands family (Tahiti, Pitcairn, Oland, Verde, Hainan) and Sea Islands family (Kaveri, Bonaire, Hawaii, Kabini, Mullins) we are now defaulting to the newer amdgpudriver instead of the older Radeon, and feedback, if it works properly or not on your hardware, would be helpful.

A full list of included packages is available in the .idx file for the classical installation media or the .lst file for the live iso images.
For those that want to jump in and test straight away, the images can be downloaded here, as always with pre-release images, use your best judgement.
The set of available ISO images is the same as in Mageia 7, offering installation media for both 32 and 64 bit systems, 64bit live images for Plasma, GNOME and Xfce, as well as a 32bit live image for Xfce. Some of the major improvements in ISO are that our netinstall can now be used to install over Wi-Fi connections with WPA encryption. Previously, only WEP encryption was available. You can find more information in the Release Notes.
Also, please note the issues listed in the Errata. These are in the process of being evaluated, so updates during installation may provide fixes to a number of them. Please add online repositories when you install this RC1 and don’t forget to update after installation.
We hope that the release works well for you, but if there are issues please report them to our Bugzilla so that we can get around to sorting them for the final release. If you want to get involved in ISO testing, packaging or any other aspect of Mageia, there is lots of information here.
A huge hand to all of the people involved with getting this release out of the door, and to all of the testers for giving us the feedback that we need to get Mageia 8 ready.

Posted in Mageia, QA, release | 34 Comments

Artwork Voting

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Donald Stewart

With the first release candidate due in the coming weeks, it’s time to get the artwork for Mageia 8 finished. Before we get down to choosing the images, it’s really great to see all of the submissions and how creative people are, they will definitely help make Mageia 8 look great, our thanks to everyone that has given their time for this.


There will be two votes, one for backgrounds and one for screensavers. The signature background will be chosen from the top 5, the runners up will be included as additional backgrounds. The screensavers will be taken from the top 20 images that are suitable.

To vote, please choose the top 5 images for backgrounds and the top 10 for screensavers ranking them from 1st – 5th/10th. It’s worth considering the artwork guidelines and Mageia colours for the backgrounds, and choosing a piece that will integrate well. For the screensavers, something that will crop well and create a nice reflection is desirable. The previous background and some screensaver examples are at the bottom here.


The background vote, including the images, can be found here.
The screensaver vote, also with the images can be found here.

The vote will be open for one week, closing on the 8th of January.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed and happy voting!

Posted in artwork, Atelier, community | 3 Comments

Mageia 8 Artwork Contest, Take Two

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Donald Stewart

Sadly when we ran the first contest the translation and announcements into many of our communities didn’t happen so many submissions were missed out on, to solve this, we will run the contest again, from 2020/12/18 until 2021/1/1. It will use the same pool for submissions, so any artwork that has been previously submitted will be included automatically, but if there are additional pieces or new versions, please feel free to add them.
Below is the original announcement with the rules and guidelines, as well as the link to the collection pool.

As in previous years, we’re looking for your contributions and ideas, but not just images and photos – if you have icons and logos, or ideas on how login screens or animations should look, then it’s time to discuss or show them off.

Image credit XKCD

We will normally choose a digital abstract piece using the colours of the Mageia logo for the signature background It should be easily cropped to different aspect ratios without losing the feel of the image and have a resolution of at least 3,200 by 2,400px, in order to accommodate a wide variety of monitors. Alternative background and screensavers have less restrictive guidelines, so if you feel like flexing your creativity, we’d love to see what you come up with.

Rules
The contest begins on the 30th of July 2020 and will run until the 20th of August 2020, Mageia will provide 1 official background, 10 additional backgrounds and all the other bits we do to make Mageia look great. If you’d like to participate, it’s easy:
Please submit your work to the Mageia 8 artwork drop. You also have the option to send a link to the Atelier mailing list. The Atelier team will choose 10 backgrounds from different contributors to be included in the “additional backgrounds”.

Prerequisites

  • minimal size: 3,200×2,400 px for images, preferably SVG for icons
  • no borders
  • no text inside: the Mageia logo may be placed for show, but will need to be removable
  • scalable or croppable for all possible aspect ratios: 4:3, 16:9, 16:10 etc.
  • License: CC By SA 3.0 or later

Please also have a look here for more information about things you have to watch out for or to see previous Mageia wallpapers. Some screensavers and the Mageia 7 background are uploaded on the artwork drop for reference.
Photos will be considered for screensavers and additional backgrounds provided no recognisable people are visible. Please avoid copyrighted artwork, or, you must own the copyright and agree to the CC By SA 3.0 license.
All the work needs to be original with the source files (SVG, xcf, etc) available and within Mageia’s artwork guidelines. Please upload a png or similar as they are much easier for previewing. We hope that these guidelines will make everything clear and help you to make something that will make Mageia look great.
The guidelines cover the Official Mageia Logo, colour scheme, website motif, fonts, wallpaper and other elements. The Mageia official logo is also covered by our Trademark Policy.
Take a moment to learn the rules, then, jump in and create with us!


Final choice
The final winners will be chosen by the Mageia council and announced on the Mageia blog.

Posted in artwork, Atelier, Beta, Collaboration, community, Mageia | Tagged , | 2 Comments

8 in beta2

Posted on December 13, 2020 by papoteur

We are happy to announce the release of Mageia 8 Beta 2. After a  long time since the beta 1, we look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts so that we can continue to get Mageia 8 ready for release.As we said in a previous post, a lot of work had to be done for the basesystem upgrade, java, kernel, and the graphical stack. These upgrades are now in a state that allows for the Beta 2 ISO’s to be built and tested.

Here are some of the major packages included in this release:

  • Kernel – 5.9.12 (5.10 will land in a short term)
  • glibc – 2.32
  • gcc – 10.2.1
  • rpm – 4.16.1
  • Chromium – 87 (x86_64-only)
  • Firefox – 78.5 (ESR) 
  • LibreOffice – 7.0.4
  • Plasma – 5.20.4
  • GNOME 3.38.1
  • Cinnamon 4.8.2
  • Xfce 4.15.2
  • Mate 1.24

PHP is provided in release 8.0. As this one is very recent, some applications using it are not yet ready for it.

A full list of included packages is available in the .idx file for the classical installation media or the .lst file for the live iso images.

For those that want to jump in and test straight away, the images can be downloaded here, as always with pre-release images, use your best judgement.

The set of available ISO images is the same as in Mageia 7, offering installation media for both 32 and 64 bit systems, 64bit live images for Plasma, GNOME and Xfce, as well as a 32bit live image for Xfce. Some of the major improvements in ISO are that our netinstall can now be used to install over WIFI connections with WPA encryption. Previously, only WEP encryption was available. You can find more information in the Release Notes which are still updated.

We hope that the release works well for you, but if there are issues please report them to our Bugzilla so that we can get around to sorting them for release. If you want to get involved in ISO testing, packaging or any other aspect of Mageia, there is lots of information here.

A huge hand to all of the people involved with getting this release out of the door, and to all of the testers for giving us the feedback that we need to get Mageia 8 ready.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 30 Comments

Mageia 8 is on its way

Posted on November 13, 2020 by papoteur

The road to get Mageia 8 is winding, slow but steady.

The current situation is that major packages have been updated to latest versions, such as:

– latest Linux kernel 5.9.6 built for x86_64, i586, arm7l and aarch64  architectures,which can recognize all new released hardware since Mageia 7.1. We intend to release Mageia 8 with a Long Term Support Kernel. 5.10 will be the new LTS one, just around the corner for a December release. We will ship with this version.

– basesystem with systemd 246, glibc 2.31, GCC 10.2, LLVM 10.0.1, urpmi 8.123, DNF 4.2.23 and rpm 4.16.0 ;

– Java stack updated to java-11-openjdk (11.0.9.6) and built against this version;- python 3.8.5, rust 1.47, ruby 2.7.2, Golang 1.15.3,…

We decided to stop  supporting Java 8, and only have Java 11. This requires fixing the Java stack, as some applications  have never been ported, and therefore have to be removed, while others have to be updated to the ported version.

On the desktop side, we have an updated x11-server to 1.20.9 stack. A Wayland session for GNOME is available on Intel, AMD and even NVIDIA (with nvidia-current nonfree drivers). KDE Plasma is based on QT 5.15.1 with Plasma-Workspace 5.20.2, which can permit a wayland session preview. All infrastructure is here for it to have a desktop running on modern technologies. By default, we still ship Plasma with an X11 session on all hardware.

GNOME is at 3.38.1. LXqt is 0.16. XFCE is at 4.15 preview and is a good candidate to move to the 4.16 release before we ship Mageia 8.

All other desktop environments are updated and run well (Cinnamon 4.6, MATE 1.24.1).

Firefox and Thunderbird are at same version as in Mageia 7 (78 ESR branch).

Developers are working on hopefully getting the Chromium browser to build.

Preventing us from releasing Mageia 8, the remaining issues are:

1) Some packages can’t build. There are 300 of them (among more than 14,500 in Core). Packagers and developers are working diligently to get these packages fixed.
2) We must provide a secure Mageia 8 operating system. Currently, there are over 70 security related bugs, and ones that can be fixed must be fixed before release.
3) NVIDIA drivers with 5.9 series Linux kernel make it difficult to have a good working set-up for all use cases. Currently, X11 drivers (OpenGL) are OK for the 455 and 390 series, but OpenCL and CUDA are broken due to change in the 5.9 Linux Kernel. We don’t have an ETA on fixing this yet so, nvidia-340 can’t run well with this 5.9.x kernel.
4) Dependency issues in packages which would prevent them from being installed.  Packagers are working to get these issues fixed as well.
5) Other various release blocker bugs also need to be ironed out.
A new Beta 2 ISO will be pushed as soon as these issues are resolved.

These difficulties are challenging, so we will release as soon it is ready.
See you soon!

Mageia Team

Writen by Aurélien

Posted in Beta, Uncategorized, Weekly roundup | 25 Comments