Review Mageia Alpha2 x86-64
Posted: 19 Mar 2011, 03:55
 I downladed the iso and instaled it in Virtualbox.Installer: Works well and is the same as Mandriva. Partitioning the entire disk went well. Picking the Language and time zone was no problem. I got the choice between KDE and Gnome and Custom and picked Gnome. All as I am used to from Mandriva so I am in a familiar territory. No problems and no difference. I picked the generic resolution of 1280x1024 76hz And clicked my way through. The installation finished and I was offered an update. My network was up so I kept on clicking and the update started. Then I got the message that I had to reboot for kernel 2.6.37.3 etc.So I restarted  Or I powered down the machine in Virtualbox and removed the CD-rom from the boot order.The Gnome login went fine and then I got an error message about Gdm-simple-greeter in norwegian. Something about the windows not suporting to store active configuration – or something - and that I had to start it manually the next time I log in. I don't know what it means but I click ok and go on into a nice green looking Gnome. The installation is finished and it went fine. Real easy and better than Windows  Use: Well the resolution I set during installation was ignored so I went to the system menu and picked screens and set it to 1440x1050. The option was there and it went like a dream. I can assure you that this not always is the case in Virtualbox. I fired up chromium and had a look at http://bjoernvold.com/forum and I was immediately impressed with the clean look and the crisp fonts. It looks a bit better than in Mandriva.I don't know why, it just does. That could be a chromium thing so I fired up Firefox and got a sorry excuse for a web page with a link to Mageia. I can understand that this is not polished, it is not important – so Mageia is forgiven. And the fonts and the look and feel was pico bello -nice. Mageia comes with Firefox 4 and the horrible Gif animation problem is gone – meza like. So time to install some software but.... where is the control panel? Hm... going to terminal and trying a mcc. Ah there it was – nice and familiar. Easy to understand like in Mandriva. Lots of software there already. I wonder where it comes from so I take a look at the repositories. During installation Mageia has picked Nonfree Release and Nonfree Updates and Core 32bit Release and Core 32bit Updates. I dont know what that means but I will have a closer look at them later | Ok back to the software installer in the familiar MCC. I tried a search for opera – nothing. Then I tried a search for sudo – nothing. Then I tried Gimp -nothing. I understand why it is not integrated in the GUI now. The search function is not working. If I pick the categories on the side lots of programs turn up so it is there. Ah well it is an Alpha so I can live with that. Ok moving on and went to system and created a new user. No problem! Leaving MCC with a good feeling most of it works. Now it is time for some terminal work and I think I will activate sudo. I do a urpmi nano because I prefer that editor and it installs fine. Then I do a EDITOR=nano visudo and add myself to the sudoers. Now it is time to do a sudo urpmi -–auto-update: It reports that my repos are up to date an that I have a load of orphans. Amongst them kernel-desktop-devel-2.6.37.3.1etc.etc I check my kernel with uname -r and find it to be 2.6.37.4 so the orpahns list is probably right. Time then to remove the orphans with the famous urpme --auto-orphans It removed a load of stuff and left kernel devel because it is needed by (installed) dkms. OK fine by me and a repeated sudo urpmi –-auto-update did not come up with any auto-orphans. So time to reboot. The user I created is there and I log in. I get the same error message on startup and I click it away and get into Gnome. Time to really test this thing so I do a urpmi task-kde-minimal. This meta package works nicely in Mandriva. It starts and then my Virtualbox reports that I only have 52 MB left -I ignore the message. Mageia is installing KDE 4.6.1-4 and I have this on my Arch so I know it is a very stable and fine KDE. The installation does not go through. So I went to mcc and picked KDE and filter “installed” and removed the KDE elements that were already installed. That went fine, and it is not Mageias fault that my Virtualdisk was to small. Impressions. Mageia gives a snappy and fast impression, but it is always hard to tell in Virtualbox. The fonts look good much better than in Mandriva. Most parts of the system work like in Mandriva. That makes Mageia a very userfriendly distro. An install attempt for netbeans pulled some stuff but not netbeans, but that is why it is called alpha. The update during install leaves auto orphans - that is very alpha too. A comparison to Mandriva Mint or OpenSuse at this point would not be fair. But the Alpha shows that Mageia has the potential to get there. |