The Enormous Mageia 6 Update

Watch this space, we said – well, your patience is soon to be rewarded!

Releasing the Mageia 6 updates for QT5, KF5, Plasma, KDE and LXQt has just been approved. There will be well over 500 packages in total!

To help reduce the chance of users trying to install the updates from a mirror that hasn’t been fully updated, the hdlist generation will be held for 24 hours after the updates are pushed from updates testing to the updates repository. This should help ensure that the mirrors are fully synced before the hdlist generation is turned back on, and the updates are actually made available for users to install from the normal updates repository.

The hdlist is the list of packages, and their version, that the update system uses to know if updates are available – it is much smaller than the updates themselves, so delaying it will not impact the mirror synchronisation.

The next step will be to retest upgrading from Mageia 5 KDE to Mageia 6 Plasma, so we can turn the flag back on to allow upgrading using mgaapplet. Once that’s done, the limited provision of security updates for Mageia 5 that we’ve been doing will cease.

Then we can start producing and testing the Mageia 6.1 iso images to allow installing on systems with newer CPUs.

After Mageia 6.1 is released, Mageia 7 will become the primary focus, although Mageia 7 has already been in development for some time.

Also, we just learned yesterday about the new Spectre NG bugs. Once the mitigations for those are available, Mageia 6 installed systems will get those updates, but we’ll have to decide whether to build Mageia 6.2 iso images, or leave those updates for Mageia 7, for live iso users.

Roundup

And, of course, there have still been many other updates since the last Roundup – here’s what happened in Weeks 17 and 18:

Security fixes:

  • php   Mga5, 6
  • gsoap    Mga6
  • boost    Mga6
  • ghostscript    Mga5, 6
  • java-1.8.0-openjdk, copy-jdk-configs    Mga5, 6
  • links    Mga 5, 6
  • anki    Mga6
  • xdg-user-dirs    Mga6
  • libofx    Mga6
  • webkit2    Mga6
  • ming    Mga6
  • sox    Mga5, 6

Bugfix:

  • freerdp Mga6

… and almost a thousand updated packages into Cauldron for Mageia 7! A great big vote of thanks to our devs and QA people, without whom we would all be lost.

Remember to keep watching the usual resources: the Mageia AppDBPkgSubmit to see the last 48 hours, and Bugzilla to see what’s currently happening.

Enjoy!

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23 Responses to The Enormous Mageia 6 Update

  1. Pingback: Надзвичайне оновлення Mageia 6 | Mageia Blog (Україна)

  2. Anadi says:

    Awesome work and development everyone 🙂

  3. Standing Bear says:

    I have been a linux user since the 1980’s when all one could get was debian and some friends, and the installation process was a ‘bit more problematical’. I appreciated linux for its multiple grafikal desktops with the wonderful scenic wallpapers that you could shop for or provide on your own…..as long as one used KDE and its cute dragon mascot, since Gnome confined you to one single desktop, just like windows.
    Now comes that nasty ‘plasma’ that took over my nice KDE and forced people to use only ONE desktop, or if you found out how to make more it got revenge by forcing them ALL to use really ugly, stupid to the point of idiotic rotten substitutes for wallpaper called ‘splashscreens’. Right in that term, ‘splashscreens’ ALL look like what a cow with runny diarrhea would do to a putrescent canvas. Couple that with realllllly dumb looking icons straight out of a loooony-bin or a school for chimpanzees and one has a recipe for just scrubbing that obcenity off my hard drive and booting up an old version…….or using a different window manager. Absolutely REFUSE to use ANYTHING that forces ‘plasma’ and its trashy art on MY computer. That is why I loathe windows chinese spyware. Will go anywhere to any other distro or windo manager to get rid of plasma and get by beloved wallpapers back. Wallpapers that are not like Donald Trump and try to force the user into sewage that he/she loathes; wallpapers that are honest and call themselves as they are, not ……… ‘diarrhea splatt-screams. That is why I still use Mageia 5.1, and SuSE distros that are not taken over my the monster from hell plasma. Would have clicked on the artwork customizer but gravatar.com is a site with bad stuff on it that I do not want on my machine’s alabaster and virus and spamware free interface.

  4. Anadi says:

    Standing Bear:
    I don’t see how users are forced …? You can change the look of KDE along with toolbars and you have a choice of menu’s to use. Splashscreens and icons, you can download and install another icon set if you prefer and make your own splashscreen or download a picture that you would like to use. Plasma does allow for customisation.

  5. Pingback: La Enorme Actualización de Mageia 6 | Mageia Blog (Español)

  6. Alan says:

    I am praying that I cwill be able to have an active panel at the foot of my second screen as I can with Mageia 5.

  7. Standing Bear says:

    When one goes to the customization windo in SuSE-Plaaghhhsma, one is presented with NO choice but to use whatever small collection of little old lady wallpaper flower still lifes you want, but you better love it because it will be on ALL your desktops. All the other choices are like talking or push-buttoning through a LA Water Power fone menu hoping to find truth where no humans live, only to find your self back on the same treadmill to perdition. Same with all the icon sets..every choice is a bland nothing straight out of Kaptain Kangaroo of old days….where is the choice…gone. In its place are innumerable meaningless choices and no idea of what some of them do; but rest assured that some of them will lock you on to a roller coaster to inoperability and forced re-installation. This with no manual to guide you or warnings to save you until it is too hefffin’ late.

  8. Standing Bear says:

    I might add that SuSE is kind of the innocent victim here too. The guilty party is KDE which is on many distros. Its organization for good or ill or a quick buck or whatever from whoever sold its soul to bland oblivion: Chinese, microsoft (still smarting from their defeat at the hands of Novell for their silent partner trying to torpedo linux using SCO as his (P.A.) weapon of choice, some misguided mid-level exec peddling his/her rabbit food..whatever. The result is a show stopper! I will not use stick figure user icons and it’s ilk; I will not suffer still life flower scenes or bonsai walls instead of my scenes of my beloved California and its national parks like Yosemite, or the Golden Gate Bridge. I will not suffer bland uniformity of desktop art such that changing from one desktop to another, while usefull, becomes boring.

  9. Standing Bear says:

    One last parting shot. When Linus Torvalds moved from kernel 2.4 to 2.6 long ago, his kernel dropped the ‘shred’ command from its core utilities, swallowing drivel from government agents to the effect that the shred command would not work on ‘magnetic media’. The ‘shred’ command never did make it back into our linux kernels where it belongs, where it cannot be removed by hostile state actors bent on suppressing the rights of its citizens to privacy..
    The ‘magnetic media’ argument was fatuous on its face, as one could always go away from ‘journalizing kernels’ and dis-allow the keeping of a journal when installing operating systems and/or formatting disks. Ext2 kept no journal, and others allowed you to NOT use one. That said, ext2 DID have problems when computers running them lost power of had to suffer unplanned shut downs. Kernel 2.4 DID do networking far better than any of its successors until modern times, and could detect all manner of junk on the networks like internet of things objects even.

    The result was computers in our hands that were open books to corporate crooks that would spy on us to sell us junk. For years there was no real shredder on linux while there were plenty on windows’ machines. Fortunately the ‘bleachbit program’ finally came around to save us from having to use windows just to be able to protect our payroll lists, customer lists, etc, from hackers and other low lifes. And bleachbit can run on linux too. We always had ‘wipedisk’, but that was like using a sledgehammer on a gnat, inasmuch as its’ only use was to witp entire disks.

    • Filip says:

      There are options to use different wallpapers for Plasma but not built in.

      Luckily Mageia offer more than 20 desktop environment/ window managers.

      I installed XFCE from live DVD after almost two decades of KDE due to it’s recently highly increased volatility. I was impressed by how nice learning curve it was for me so I don’t intend or need to go back. I also really like low resources usage.

    • Canadaist says:

      This is griefer nonsense, like throwing chairs in second life.

      • Standing Bear says:

        Your reply is cartooney and presents neither logic nor reason, and does not demonstrate knowledge of any history of our favorite operating system. Far better is the reply of Filip who knows how to work around problems instead of tiltin’ at windmills. I LIKE XFCE and Enlightenment. First ran into Enlightenment in the 1980’s when its user interface was almost metallic, but it made maximum use of the small screens then available by simply making its typefaces smaller, and refusing to ‘full screen’ by knee jerk the browsers of the day. Except Konqueror from KDE which was once the most secure browser in computerdom by its willingness to stop java and HtML in its tracks if the end user…US…. so wanted. Wish it had stayed that way, but time marches on to the richest drummer. The newer Firefoxes have gone over to the dark side with their insistance on making it harder to screen bad cookies, and by castrating effective extensions like no script. Google’s browser will not even allow no-script…sold out to the scammers and doubleclikkers. No-Script ultimate, an improved version is also blocked and its old editions broken by their newer browser ‘updates’. Thank God for Debian

  10. Tu Tuo says:

    Great! I have two questions here:
    1) will Mageia 6.1 upgrade to LLVM 6.0?
    2) will AARCH64 support be ready in Mageia 7.0?
    Thanks.

  11. Mika says:

    Hopefully not, I think the most important thing for the 6.1 release is to provide an installer with updated kernels providing support for new CPU’s and things like M.2 harddrives to extend the 6.0 release lifecycle for some months. (Old kernels and dirstros used to have problem for mounting M.2 nvme harddrives) while keeping most of the packages in known and tested versions.

    Hopefully the 7.0 will then be released soon afterwards providing a bigger jumps on individual packages to newer versions. (llvm, firefox, gnome, etc…) I really hope that 7.0 release could be soon after summer as many packages on 6.1 release are already starting to look pretty old.

  12. Pingback: Das große Mageia 6 Update | Mageia Blog (Deutsch)

  13. Pingback: Links 6/5/2018: Crostini and Red Hat Summit 2018 Coming | Techrights

  14. Gukin says:

    Many kudos to the Mageia team, busting their humps to make the transition from MGA5 to MGA6 less of a headache for the users but more of a headache for the developers and QA, all the while providing security fixes for MGA5. This is how a provider of an operating system should behave toward its users.

    Even more kudos to Mageia for allowing me to have an “out of the box” experience building an AMD Raven Ridge 2400G system using cauldron and the kernel_linus kernel directly from the cauldron repos. The 2400G has been rather notorious in its behaviour with Linux but Mageia made it easy.

  15. Pingback: Grande atualização da Mageia 6 | Mageia Blog (Português)

  16. Omnio says:

    Something seems to be wrong, yesterday I checked this blog and this post wasn’t here, it showed up only today (10th of May), but the date on the post says May 5). Hmm.