We still can’t believe how much fun it is to make Mageia together, and we’ve been doing it for two and a half years.

For people who can’t wait, get it here; release notes are here. To upgrade from Mageia 2, see here.

Before we get to the rest of the information: we dedicate this release to the memory of Eugeni Dodonov, our friend, our colleague and a great inspiration to those he left behind. We miss his brilliance, his courtesy and his dedication.

What’s new in Mageia 3?

You can take a look at the complete list of packages upgraded from Mageia 2, by checking the Mageia Apps Database:

Applications – see all the new and updated applications in Mageia 3;

All updated packages – see all the packages with new versions

Major new features

Updates to RPM (4.11) and urpmi, which has been given a good Mageia turnout and cleanup

Kernel 3.8

systemd 195

GRUB is the default bootloader; GRUB2 is available to test.

Revamped package groupings for installation and rpmdrake

KDE 4.10.2

GNOME 3.6.

Xfce 4.10

Libreoffice 4.0.3

AND: Steam for linux!

See the Release Notes and Mageia App DB for the complete list.

Why choose Mageia?

Community

We all work together – to make the best distribution we can, and to help each other. Come and join us, and make some of the best friends you’ll ever meet – on IRC, on the Forums, in any of the teams, on Google+ , on Facebook – or follow us on Twitter.

Mageia’s bug reporting system is open to everyone, as are the mailing lists and community support. That makes it easier for you to have your voice heard and follow what is happening. And access to our fully tested and prompt security updates is free of charge for everyone.

Looking good!

You’ll notice that we have updated our logo! Thanks to Nicolas Duval for this great design. Still Mageia, still the cauldron, but with a real Mageia quirk…

Thanks again to Leo for our great new background. Mageia’s Atelier team hopes you’ll like our new look as much as we liked making it.

We couldn’t do it without…

Our heartfelt thanks go to all the people who donated their time to make this release possible, and all the people who donated money allowing us to buy the servers that we use to build the distribution.

All of us Mageians have been depending on Gandi and Ielo, who have been quietly sponsoring Mageia since the begining of the project. Gandi has been providing us machines on their cloud infrastructure that we use to host the blog and the website. Ielo has been providing space in their datacenter, and the network connection, to host all our other servers that we use for all the Mageia infrastructure such as the packages build system, bug tracker, mailing lists, main mirror, etc… Thank you!

Welcome to Mageia 3!