A Glimpse of Mageia 6: Mageia 6 Sta2

Today, I got great news at G+. Jean Francois shared here a link to an FTP directory where I could download Mageia 6 Sta2 Live DVD.

Of course, I downloaded it and put it into a pendrive to test it on my ZaReason Strata.  It booted normally and, after a while, I was greeted by Plasma 5.

OK... where's the cashew thingy?

The new menu... Very Plasma-like.

I noticed that the icons were new and the DE is more responsive that the beta that I had installed previously.  I particularly loved the new icon for the Mageia Control Center (it reminded me of the nazar in Pisi Linux).

I used the system a bit to see if I could detect certain glitches even though I know this is not a final version.  My intention is not to write a review, but to assess potential problems and, most importantly, to get more familiar with Mageia running Plasma 5.

In general, and thanks to OpenMandriva Lx and Fedora, I can say that using the DE was not as awkward as the first time I ran a system with it.  However, there are some questions that my test drive is forcing me to ask:

1.  Where is the cashew control?  The DE was locked to Folder view, which is fine with me, but I could not add any plasmoids to see what gives.
2.  Will netdrake be replaced? The network applet was dead.  To use the Web, I had to add a new wireless network from MCC.  Both OpenMandriva Lx and Fedora use now KDE's network applet... Is Mageia following suit?
3.  Is Mageia discontinuing the desktop cube?  The effect could be activated, but it was not responsive.  I hope it is due to something that needs ironing and the desktop cube will be back in the final release.

Of course, this is a Live DVD.  Maybe the Install DVD will give more options.

Upgrade to OpenMandriva Lx 3

My HP Pavilion has been running OpenMandriva 2014 exclusively, but I decided to upgrade it to OpenMandriva Lx 3 last week.

The move was sensible; I needed the machine to work in my office at the university and, as they are shaking IT everywhere, I wanted to have software that was more up to date.

However, the upgrade was complicated.  The installation part was flawless and fast but, after finishing, when I attempted to upgrade the packages, I would lose display at a given point.

I remember that something like that happened to me when I tried to upgrade OpenMandriva Lx 3. on my ZaReason Strata the first time.  Eventually, I solved the problem then.  On the HP Pavilion, there was no such luck.

I tried installing from scratch multiple times, both with MCC and Discover, and even with urpmi on the CLI.  It seems that the culprit is a package called gtk-lib.

 Oh, well.  I decided to leave it like that while I figure out if that was a bad repo sync or what.  The machine works nice and, if I could survive last year using a 2-year-old system, I guess OpenMandriva Lx 3 will be fine.

Memories

I read this article and it evoked so many memories!  It pretty much describes how I got started with Linux, except that, in 2009, I went for Mandriva instead of Ubuntu or Debian, as the author did.