No vacation for the brave: Mageia 5 alpha 2 is out!

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Anne Nicolas

While many of us are having some well-deserved rest, the Mageia team is still on the deck and working on Mageia 5 development.

This second development release is a big step towards Mageia 5, since most of the core packages have now been updated to their latest stable branches: kernel 3.15.6, X.Org 1.16 and Mesa 10.2.5 for some of the biggest ones. There has also been some important work done towards packaging KDE frameworks 5 (technological foundation for KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications 5) and LxQt for Mageia 5: feel free to try them out, and don’t hesitate to report bugs or discuss them on our dev mailing list.

Special thanks to Thomas (aka tmb) who took the time to prepare Live ISOs for this alpha even though he’s taking some time off to regain his health.

You can have a look at  for more details about alpha 2:

Work is in progress. Stay tuned!

Posted in alpha, Mageia, packager, QA, release | 14 Comments

First step reached for Mageia 5: alpha 1 is available for tests

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Anne Nicolas

Time has come again for ISO testing!

Here is the first step towards Mageia 5. Most of your favorite software has been updated to their latest versions. There is still a long road ahead, but all in all, this first alpha is in rather good shape.

You can have a look at planned features for Mageia 5 for more details. Work is in progress. Stay tuned!

This first development release is dedicated to our friend Thomas (aka tmb), we wish him good health and to be back soon!

More information about alpha 1:

As a reminder, here are the planned release dates for Mageia 5:

  • Alpha 1: 2014/07/08
  • Alpha 2: 2014/08/04
  • Beta 1: 2014/09/30
  • Beta 2: 2014/10/31
  • Release Candidate: 2014/11/21
  • Internal release: 2014/12/12
  • Final Release: 2014/12/19

Enjoy this new release!

Posted in alpha, community, Mageia, packager, QA, release | 15 Comments

Mageia 5 artwork call: important update

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Rémi Verschelde

Due to a recent change in Flickr’s login and upload policies, it is no longer possible to use Facebook or Google accounts to access the group. Users must now sign up for and log in with a Yahoo account.

While our ultimate goal is an internal solution for artwork collections, more pressing needs have made this a lower priority.

We had hoped to have a system in place by the time that this switch occurred, however, building ISOs for the upcoming Alpha 1 of Mageia 5 has kept the sysadmin team busy.

In the meantime, please continue to use Flickr, or, if you don’t have or don’t want to create a Yahoo account, feel free to email your work to artwork@group.mageia.org.

Posted in artwork, Atelier, community, Mageia | 6 Comments

Mageia and you at the 15th LSM

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Rémi Verschelde

vignette_RMLL_250x250 The 15th Libre Software Meeting is coming up!

LSM (in French RMLL for « Rencontres mondiales du logiciel libre ») is a non-commercial cycle of conferences, round tables and workshops based on Libre Software and its uses. Its aim is to provide a platform for Libre Software users, developers and stakeholders as well as any visitor.

We’ll be there, holding a booth to demonstrate Mageia, talk about it with the visitors, maybe do some live installs… and of course be friendly and meet with fellow users and contributors!

The event lasts the week from July 5th to the 11th, and it is held in Montpellier, in the South of France. Mageia will be present there the whole time, so come anytime!

It’s a great chance to show your face for Mageia or to meet some of the people behind it, so don’t miss the opportunity if you are in the region of Montpellier!

For more details or to get in touch with the people who will represent Mageia at the LSM:

Posted in community, events, Mageia, users | 1 Comment

Pulling Mageia 4.1 out of the hat

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Rémi Verschelde

While most of the world is turned towards Brazil to enjoy the World Cup, Mageia has been preparing its own major worldwide event: Mageia 4.1 has been released!

If you were not expecting it, you might wonder what this unnanounced 4.1 version is. It is a maintenance release for Mageia 4 which contains all security and bugfix updates that were issued since the release in February 2014. In particular, the Mageia 4 ISO images were affected by an upstream syslinux bug which prevented installation using a burned DVD on some older hardware. Among the updated packages you will find the Linux kernel (version 3.12.21), various drivers for your hardware, and updated software such as Libreoffice and Firefox. Another notable update is the fix for the well-known “Heartbleed” bug of OpenSSL.

Please note that the Mageia 4.1 version tag concerns only the respin of the ISO images: the actual release that gets installed is still Mageia 4, with all ofthe updates that had been released by early June. This means that if you are already running Mageia 4 and performing updates regularly, you are not required to do anything since your system is already up-to-date. The Mageia 4.1 maintenance release is meant for new installations and upgrades from Mageia 3.

The download links on the website have been updated, so if you were waiting for the dust of the release to settle before upgrading to Mageia 4, now is the right time!

This maintenance release could only happen thanks to the dedicated work of the QA team. They had to test these new ISO images on various hardware while also testing and validating the regular updates for Mageia 3 and 4. This was a daunting task, even more so since the QA team is understaffed.

As you know, Mageia is 100% made by its community, and that means that you are also part of those who can make Mageia. So don’t hesitate to get in touch with the QA team if you would like to help and give us a hand. There are tasks for everyone in the QA team, from testing bugfixes and security updates to the upcoming Mageia 5 Alpha1 ISO images! If QA is not to your taste, then try one of the other teams instead.

Speaking of which, the other Mageia contributors have not been idle while the QA team was preparing this new set of ISO images: Mageia 5 is already in the making, with the first alpha arriving in July! We haven’t communicated much about it until now, but you will soon get all of the information you have been craving.

Posted in Mageia, QA, release | 14 Comments