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Mageia 4 alpha 2 is waiting for your tests! We still have a big work to do on desktop integration. Several features for Mageia 4 are about providing more desktop environments as there is a lot of movement in this area at the moment. Everybody should then find the right one for them depending on their own needs. Now you can join the fun and test this new version.

The first alpha release of Mageia 4, the distribution derived from Mandriva Linux, is now available. There isn't too much to see out of Mageia 4 Alpha 1 over the Mageia 3 stable release at this time, but there's a whole list of features being planned.

I have never reviewed Mageia before and there is a reason for that. Mageia has always been my "Eleanor". The "Eleanor" reference comes from the film "Gone in 60 seconds" and refers to the one car that Nicolas Cage cannot steal because something happens when he tries to do so. Mageia has always given me that sort of a problem. This is a review of the Gnome version of Mageia 3.

The Mageia development team announced a few minutes ago, August 10, the immediate availability for download of the first Alpha release of the upcoming Mageia 4 operating system.

Your answers also showed us just how diverse the readership here is. Not only did we see a lot of you offering up the usual suspects, such as Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora, we also got reminders of Linux’s rich history. It was somewhat gratifying to discover that some who visit here first tried Linux using long gone but not forgotten distros such as Yggdrasil and Soft Landing System.

An interview with Anne Nicolas, the chairperson of Mageia.org association.

According to our “Newbie” Distro Poll, someone considering moving from Windows or Mac to Linux should consider taking Linux Mint for a spin. The poll asked the question, “What Linux distro would you be most likely to recommend to a new Linux user?” Evidently this was a subject that interested many of you, because a whopping 1,339 votes were cast in this poll, making it the most number of votes one of our polls has ever received.

Being benchmarked today at Phoronix is a comparison of eight different BSD and Linux operating systems. The contenders for this performance roundabout include PC-BSD 9.1, DragonFlyBSD 3.4.1, Ubuntu 13.04, Linux Mint 15 RC, CentOS 6.4, Fedora 18, Mageia 3, and openSUSE 12.3. Which of these operating systems are the fastest and slowest for a variety of different workloads?

For me, the release of Mageia 3 was one of the most anticipated releases of the first half in 2013, after Debian Wheezy and Ubuntu Raring Ringtail. The release announcement of Mageia 3 promises of absolutely the very latest version of Linux kernel and applications, another reason for me to test Mageia's to ascertain it's stability.

Some forks do better than others. In the case of the Madriva fork known as Mageia, it's doing quite well, this week releasing its third major update in less than three years.

We mean, what’s really advanced about an advanced distro? Firefox and Chrome are the same, whether you’re in Linux or Windows, as is Thunderbird–and even grandma can usually make the jump from from Word to LibreOffice with little to no difficulty. When you get right down to it, the “advanced” part of a “not user-friendly” Linux usually has to do with either installation or configuration, and when did grandma ever do either? If your grandma’s like ours, she calls you up to get you to come over even to do a simple little configuration trick with her Windows machine.

At long last the third major version of Mageia, the popular community fork of Mandriva Linux, is now available. There's a lot of new stuff to Mageia 3 like a new version of RPM and updated systemd, but the distribution is still not shipping GRUB2 by default...

Mageia 3 is out. Finally. Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz gives a brief run-down of what's new.

As the saying goes, "Good things come to those who wait". After Mageia 2's success, everyone is eager for Mageia 3. Be patient. Dietrich Schmitz explains.

Looking for Virtual machine images for Virtualbox and/or VMware? That quick tip is for you then.

What are the ratings of the operating systems for the ability to move house? Last time the clear winner was WinXP, followed by Linux Mint Xfce, Debian and Mageia.

The situation is different this time.

In this edition: catching up with the releases that happened over the long Easter weekend, including Mageia 3 beta 4, Scientific Linux 6.4 and Bodhi Linux 2.3.0

... Two of the other locations run DOS based Advantage Accounting Point of Sale on stand-alone DOS boxes. One of these boxes I had built them about 10 years ago finally gave out. ...

If the world of Linux distributions has ever had a rising star, it's Mageia. Launched roughly two years ago as a fork of Mandriva Linux by former employees and contributors to that French distro, Mageia sprinted up the page-hit rankings on DistroWatch, where it has sat at No. 2 for many months.

Since we first proposed systemd for inclusion in the distributions it has been frequently discussed in many forums, mailing lists and conferences. In these discussions one can often hear certain myths about systemd, that are repeated over and over again, but certainly don't gain any truth by constant repetition. Let's take the time to debunk a few of them:

For a Linux distribution only a little over two years old, the uptake of Mageia has been impressive, with the distro now regularly being found Distrowatch's top five distros, along with heavyweights such as Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint.

There is more interest in Linux than ever, and it's not always obvious to new users where to get started. Using Linux is just like using Mac or Windows-- with a pointy-clicky graphical interface. No big deal there, and Linux supplies the added bonus of an extremely powerful command-line interface, which is far more sophisticated and capable than the CLI in Max OS X and Microsoft Windows. You don't have to use it, it's there for anyone who wants it, and it isn't a big deal to learn it.

The first beta release of Mageia 3 Linux is now available...

Mandrake Linux was my best early experience with Linux, way back in the last millennium, back when literal floppy disks roamed the Earth and 4 megabytes of RAM was riches. Back then you could buy boxed sets of Red Hat Linux in stores, and Red Hat was popular as a desktop Linux. Red Hat had good printed manuals, but it had one difficulty: it did not support as much hardware as Mandrake, and I had a lot of trouble getting 3D acceleration on my video card. Red Hat didn't support my fancy Promise 66 IDE controller, so I had to connect my hard drive directly to the poky old 33Mhz controller on the motherboard. It didn't like my sound card either.