First Impressions of Mageia 2



Mageia began its life not so long ago by being a community fork of the Mandriva Linux distribution. The future of Mandriva, as a company, has been in question for years prompting several developers and users to push for an independent, community-oriented distro. The first release of Mageia, version 1, got off to a fairly good start. It didn't vary much technologically from Mandriva and felt a bit like a test run, as though the developers were making sure all the proper infrastructure was in place.



This May Mageia returned with version 2 and it looks as though the community has filled in any missing gaps. The distribution is available in many different editions. There's a DVD edition, GNOME and KDE editions, 32-bit and 64-bit builds and live CDs featuring a variety of language packs. In total I counted about 20 different download options, not including the torrent files. This variety is very much in line with the Mandriva tradition and may be, in my opinion, the biggest hurdle to trying out Mageia as the array of options is likely to be overwhelming to new users. However, the release notes are well laid out and detailed which will hopefully level out the experience for newcomers. I decided to try the 32-bit KDE edition of Mageia in the form of a live CD.



Booting from the live CD brings up a menu asking if we'd like to try the live environment or launch the system installer. I opted to try the live environment and, a few minutes later, was shown a series of option screens where I was asked to provide my preferred language, accept the distribution's license, choose my time zone and confirm my keyboard layout. Shortly after entering my information I was shown a blue-themed classic desktop environment. An application menu, quick-launch icons and task switcher sat at the bottom of the screen. Along the left side of the display were icons for browsing the file system, launching the installer and visiting Mageia's website. The application menu, as it turns out, is presented in the classic fashion and I found it to be both compact and easy to navigate.



Mageia's installer provides us with a graphical interface and takes us through a series of screens which are fairly simple in layout. The disk partitioning section comes first and we can either instruct the installer to use the existing layout as it wishes or proceed with manual partitioning. I thought it was a nice touch that the installer recommends we backup existing files before continuing with the installation. Manual partitioning I found to be nicely arranged. At the top of the window we're shown a visual representation of our disk. Clicking on parts of the diagram or various action buttons allows us to create, format, delete and resize sections of the disk. Supported file systems include ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS and NTFS. We can also make use of LVM layouts and RAID configurations. The installer also supports partition encryption. Yet, with all of these options, the developers have managed to keep the layout uncluttered and one action tends to flow seamlessly into the next. After setting up our partitions we're given the option to remove unused hardware support and extra localization files to free up disk space. Then we wait while the installer copies the files it needs to our local disk. When it is finished we're asked if we would like to install the GRUB boot loader or the LILO boot loader and we can set the location where we'd like the boot loader installed. We also have the option of editing the boot options the installer detects for us. Then the installer advises us to reboot the machine.



What I especially appreciate about the Mageia installer is each screen is simple. We are typically asked one straight forward question and offered reasonable defaults. For more experienced users almost every screen has an "Advanced" button which brings up more options. The approach makes for a clean design while allowing for more fine-tuned installations.





Mageia 2 -- System installer

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The first time we boot our local copy of Mageia the distribution downloads a series of files. The notice that a download was in progress went by quickly and no explanation was given -- I suspect the system was downloading repository information. Then a first-run wizard appears, asking us to set a root password and to create a regular user account. With our account created we're handed over to a graphical login screen. The login screen allows us to login as our regular user and also provides the option to login as a guest user. The guest account requires no password and wipes out any changes made to the account when the user logs out, leaving the account in a pristine state. Not only is this feature useful for when friends wish to borrow our computer, but the guest account can be managed (and deleted) just like any other user account via the system's control centre. The login screen also offers us the option of logging into either a KDE desktop or into IceWM, a useful fall-back option for lower-resource machines or to rescue the system if a problem develops with KDE.



Exploring the application menu we find Mageia comes with Firefox and Konqueror for web browsing, the LibreOffice suite and a document viewer in the default installation. We also find the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a system monitor and the Drake Network Centre (draknetcenter) for managing network connections. In the Multimedia section we find the Amarok music player, the KsCD audio CD player and the Dragon video player. The application menu includes the usual small apps such as a text editor, calculator and archive manager. The system comes with the KDE System Settings panel and a system control centre. The application menu also features a copy of the KDE documentation. While using the distribution I found some multimedia codecs were installed by default, mp3 files could be played on a fresh install for instance. Some video files would play, but generally opening a video file brought up a dialog box saying the proper codec could not be found and gave the option of searching the repositories for the proper software. With the default (free) repositories enabled these searches could not locate the required codecs. To get the required package the user must manually enable the extra (non-free) repositories. Adding the repositories is fairly easy to do, but I feel it's something the search software should offer to do for us automatically. Offering to search free repositories we know do not include the required packages isn't helpful in itself. The default install from a live CD doesn't include Flash, nor Java, nor a compiler, though each of these things may be installed from the repositories. Mageia ships with the 3.3 version of the Linux kernel and it is one of the few distributions shipping with up to date software which still installs the Legacy version of the GRUB boot loader.



The Mageia package manager presents us with a fairly simple graphical interface. Down the left side of the window we see application categories and, down the right side, we see a list of software in the selected category. Packages are displayed with a name and description and items can be added or removed from the system by checking a box. Actions we want to perform are queued together and run in batches. One nice feature of the package manager is it provides a collection of easy to understand filters. Software can be displayed by type (meta package, GUI application, all applications, updates) and by status (installed or available). I found the package manager to be quick to respond and, like most utilities in Mageia, straight forward to use. There is a secondary graphical package manager in Mageia called Apper. Apper feels less structured, presenting all categories and items in one large pane in the manager's window. Though Apper worked well for me and also provided clear software categories, I found the structure of the main package manager more appealing.





Mageia 2 -- Managing software packages

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I ran into some problems when it came to updating software on the system. Shortly after installing Mageia I went to the control centre and launched the update manager. It informed me there were no updates available at the time. I went into the package manager and refreshed the repository information. Again, both the main package manager and the update manager reported no updates were available, a claim they maintained during the course of the entire week. However, when I went into the Apper package manager and clicked the Updates icon it informed me there were over a dozen packages waiting to be updated. Apper downloaded and installed the updates without any problems. This pattern continued as the week went on where updates would appear in Apper only.



The Mageia control centre is probably the most distinct feature of the distribution. It provides an excellent way to configure most aspects of the operating system and does so in a way which should be either familiar, or at least easy to learn, for new users. The control centre is broken into several sections including software management, hardware, booting, security and the general system. Opening one of these sections presents us with labeled icons which launch specific modules, much the same way the KDE System Settings panel works. Through the Mageia control centre we can handle adding and removing software, timing checks for updates and enabling or disabling 3D visual effects. We can set up printers and scanners, connect to UPS devices to monitor the available power, configure our keyboard and mouse and adjust network settings. We can also set up proxies and virtual private networks. We can adjust our login authentication, enable or disable system services and manage user accounts (including the guest account). There is a module for importing documents and settings from a Windows partition, another for viewing and searching through log files. We find modules for creating NFS and Samba shares, a module to manage disk partitions and a firewall utility. There is a section for enabling website filtering and parental controls, a module for configuring the boot loader and a tool for enabling more fine-gained system-wide security. Though fine-tuned security models like SELinux and AppArmor can be intimidating to new users, Mageia comes with preset profiles which are easy to understand and enable. Some optional security profiles include "standard", "netbook" & "webserver" and each comes with an explanation to help users get started.



I did run into a few problems when working with the control centre. For instance, when trying to launch a module called "snapshots", presumably a backup tool, the module instantly crashed and offered to send a bug report. This happened each time I tried to access the snapshot module. Another utility which didn't appear to work as expected was the parental control for blocking access to specific applications. For example, I installed Kate and blocked my user from having access to the text editor. If I opened a virtual terminal and tried to launch Kate I'd get an access denied error and the application wouldn't show up in my path. However, if I went to the application menu and simply clicked on the Kate icon, the editor would open. Apparently there is a hole there which hasn't yet been plugged. These two bugs, and the issue of the missing package updates aside, I found things in the control centre worked as expected and I found all of the tools easy to use.





Mageia 2 -- System and desktop settings

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I tried running Mageia on two test machines, my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3GB of RAM, Intel video card) and a desktop box (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card). On both machines Mageia ran well. The desktop was responsive, even with effects turned on. The operating system correctly detected and utilized my laptop's Intel wireless card and I encountered no hardware compatibility issues. I did note that Mageia is a bit slower to boot than some other modern Linux distros, such as Ubuntu and Fedora. However, once up and running Mageia performed well. Running the KDE desktop without any applications open typically used around 220MB of RAM. I also ran Mageia in a VirtualBox virtual machine and found the experience to be nearly identical to running on physical hardware. Though desktop responsiveness did suffer in the virtual environment if visual effects were enabled.



Going into this review one of my internal questions was whether the community around Mageia had managed to introduce a significant amount of documentation and infrastructure to the project. Mageia, after all, having come from Mandriva was bound to contain the same useful, polished technology, the same excellent control panel and up to date desktop environments, but what about the project's website, its support? If we were to look strictly at the wiki and the documentation provided there we would soon see there is still work to be done. The release notes are quite good, but instructions and how-tos are in short supply. The flip side to this is Mageia's active forum community. We might assume from this situation support is less likely to come from the top down, but rather from users helping each other. As for the distribution itself, its quality is, for the most part, well above average. The CD is a bit light on software (there doesn't appear to be any default e-mail client, for example), but most of the basics are present. The control panel is easily the nicest and (nearly) the most complete in the Linux ecosystem, its only real rival being the very powerful, but notably less novice-friendly, YaST from the openSUSE project.



I did run into some minor issues while using Mageia, the snapshot utility and the main software update utility being the notable areas of concern, but mostly my time with Mageia was smooth, pleasant, largely complete and welcoming. I write "welcoming" because Mageia's greatest strength may not be its technical merits (though those are good), but in its design. The Mageia developers have produced one of the nicest feeling distributions I have experienced in a while. The Mageia developers really appear to understand the reasoning that just because a feature is available that doesn't mean it should be enabled by default.



Take, for example, the desktop. It's a modern KDE 4.8 desktop, yet windows don't change shape or size when they bump into the top of the screen, there are no desktop widgets and the few effects which are enabled by default are minor. The application menu is presented in the classic style and is cleanly laid out, without clutter or redundancy. Even little things like the way the virtual terminal is a plain white on black with no transparency nor flashing cursor are a nice change from what I've experienced recently. The theme is interesting without being distracting and the Mageia developers have provided GRUB Legacy for a boot loader, making managing the boot options less complicated for the user. All in all, the distribution provides a modern environment in which to work with all the modern conveniences, but with most of the frills turned off by default and it makes for a quiet, productive workspace. I found I enjoyed the combination of having a lot of options, but having them turned off at the beginning as opposed to many other environments where the options either do not exist, or they do exist and every bell and whistle is enabled.



Despite a few bugs, most of which I hope will be fixed in the coming months, I found Mageia to be solid, useful and novice-friendly. The team's infrastructure appears to be in place and working well. Once the wiki gets padded out with additional documentation I suspect Mageia will float to the top of my recommendation list.

