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Here is the Release Candidate (RC) of Mageia 3. Release Candidate software is software that has graduated Beta testing, and should be a release-ready product suitable for advanced users and reviewers. However, beginning users and critical-applications users may wish to wait for the final release.
The RC is a test release to identify any remaining bugs or missing packages, in anticipation of the official release planned for May 2013. More info about Mageia 3 development.
Contents
Download
This release can be downloaded from a mirror of your choice at http://mirrors.mageia.org/ (add iso/cauldron/ at the end of the url you get previously) or directly from http://www.mageia.org/3/
Classic installer
- 2 DVDs 32 and 64 bit
- 4 main graphical environments (KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE)
- 100% free software inside with the possibility to install non free drivers, classic installer
- Mageia-3-rc-i586-DVD.iso
- md5: 6565490dc2c0ab3ea39e599b81eec449
- sha1: f680f7660549c618ab4e4d1ac9c655cbda0699ae
- Mageia-3-rc-x86_64-DVD.iso
- md5: 6fe291b3d3a7ef86d6596ceee1e70f0b
- sha1: 7d1332c9fe06b18224fa3288e801626f3873630b
- Mageia-3-rc-i586-DVD.iso
- dual arch CD: one single ISO with both 32 and 64 bit
- Only basic software
- Mageia-3-rc-dual-CD.iso
- md5: f58bb429e08bd157f7f209a7700bbf3e
- sha1: a2f643571114c01634162a9c3873b695a81dbb92
- Mageia-3-rc-dual-CD.iso
- 2 Live CDs 32-bit: English-only
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveCD-GNOME-en-i586-CD.iso
- md5:
- sha1:
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveCD-KDE4-en-i586-CD.iso
- md5:
- sha1:
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveCD-GNOME-en-i586-CD.iso
- 4 LiveDVDs (32 and 64 bit) multi-lingual
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveDVD-GNOME-i586-DVD.iso
- md5:
- sha1:
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveDVD-KDE4-i586-DVD.iso
- md5:
- sha1:
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso
- md5:
- sha1:
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso
- md5:
- sha1:
- Mageia-3-rc-LiveDVD-GNOME-i586-DVD.iso
Major new features
Installation
Stage 1
The first stage of the installer automatically passes the correct URL to stage2 if it was provided. eg http://foobar.com/mirrors/mageia/cauldron/ instead of http://foobar.com/mirrors/mageia/cauldron/x86_64
The installer can now be loaded from a btrfs file system.
It use now kmod for loading module.
A bug was fixed in kmod which would cause the installer to load an incorrect driver for some hardware due to kmod not enforcing module ordering (mga#5833).
Stage 2
- Tokenring is no longer supported.
- The installer can now write a debug file to a USB key formatted as NTFS instead of FAT (mga#5685).
- Resizing NTFS works again (it was broken by the switch from ntfsprogs to ntfs-3g)
- The installer has been updated to include the latest kernel/rpm/perl/pango/x11-server.
- An "unselect all" button has been added when one chooses to pick package groups, allowing a faster minimal installation.
- Proprietary drivers and/or non-free firmware can now be installed during installation. The user is be asked whether to keep non-free packages during installation via a simple checkbox. Moving the mouse above the media shows a description of what each contains.
- Grub2 can now be installed at the summary step, it can also be done on a partition. Integration in drakboot is only partial, if you want a better GUI conf, you could use grub-customizer.
Debugging
It's now possible to rebuild stage 1 & stage 2 packages with a debug option in order to have better environments for debugging the installer.
Rescue
Rescue will select the most recent version of Mageia when several Mageia instances have been installed.
UEFI
Beginning with beta4 live medias, there is now experimental UEFI boot support.
Only booting from fat32 formatted USB labeled as MGA3LIVE supported so far.
Secure boot is not supported.
Package management
RPM has been upgraded to 4.11.
Urpmi has been refactored and cleaned. Various bugs have been fixed :
- urpmi used to download noarch packages twice when using --download-all option on 64-bit machines because they are in both 32 and 64-bit repositories (mga#4867)
- urpmf and urpmq now work as user with the --use-distrib option (mga#1225)
- gurpmi:
- gurpmi will upgrade glib, gtk & perl-{Glib,Gtk2} bindings as priority upgrades prior to restart (mga#5066)
- gurpmi now wraps some huge debug messages add uses a scrollbar in such cases (mga#5118)
API change
The --repackage option has been removed (it had not worked since rpm-4.6 was introduced in 2009). Repository metadata can now be compressed with XZ instead of gzip.
Security
Urpmi will now warn
- when a medium has no signing key;
- about unsigned packages from media without signing keys;
- when signature checking is disabled per medium.
The "download-all" option is supported in urpmi.cfg as opposed to being available only from the command line.
Graphical package manager
Rpmdrake wasn't properly highlighting latest changes in package changelogs when they used Epoch. Updates were sometimes wrongly deselected when clicking on "New dependencies". The --merge-all-rpmnew option is slightly faster.
Base system
kernel
- Mageia 3 RC ships with kernel 3.8.8
systemd
- Mageia 3 RC comes with systemd 195
GRUB
- Mageia 3 RC still comes with GRUB as a default. But you can test GRUB2. integration is now available in installer and drakxtools.
File systems
- OverlayFS is now available and used to build live CDs
Perl
- Perl has been upgraded to 5.16.3 and all perl packages have been rebuilt and/or updated
Ruby
- Ruby has been upgraded to 1.9.3, and most of the packages have been rebuilt.
journalctl
- Journalctl is now used as default. You can still install rsyslog if you want logs in tty12 or syslog/user/access/messages log.
- To complete
Others
- /usr move main goal is to provide an easy way to mount most of the installed operating system files read-only during normal usage.
Also make it easy to take snapshots (when combined with btrfs or lvm) or share it over the network.
Packaging
Package compression
Packages are now compressed as XZ instead of LZMA
Easier debugging
By default, minimal debuginfo is installed in order to increase the quality of bug reports and allow easier support for profiling and userspace tracing. Developers will receive better bug reports by default, without users having to enable debug media and install big debug packages.
It will also make system-wide profiling, userspace dynamic probes and casual debugging easier.
RPM groups
The groups in which Mageia packages have been redesigned to ease browsing in rpmdrake and during installation. The new organisation is meant to be more clear and efficient.
Mass rebuild
Mass rebuild has been completed. The 10,500 source packages were rebuilt in three days on four nodes. Thanks to our packager, we are close to having 100% rebuild success.
This will improve the quality of Mageia 3 and also post-product support (bug or security updates), won't need to spend time fixing stuff that should already work.
Graphical environments
KDE
KDE 4.10.2 is now available in RC.
- Upstream configuration
- Starting KDE SC 4.7 we're providing an additional package name, vanilla, in order for an end user to simply use upstream configuration for desktop and :applications. You simply need to install the vanilla-kde4-config package via rpmdrake or via urpmi like this:
- urpmi vanilla-kde4-config
Qt 4.8.4
Qt 5.0.2
QtCreator 2.7.0
GNOME
GNOME environment is also provided. Currently 3.6.3, 3.6.
LXDE
LXDE, a light, fast, and energy-saving desktop environment, is also available. The most current version as of this writing is 0.5.5.
XFCE
4.10
Available at install in the 'other desktop' checkbox with the classical iso.
Enlightenment
The e17 release of the Enlightenment desktop environment is available in the Core repositories.
RazorQt
RC comes with RazorQt v. 0.5.1: "Razor-qt is an advanced, easy-to-use, and fast desktop environment based on Qt technologies. It has been tailored for users who value simplicity, speed, and an intuitive interface. Unlike most desktop environments, Razor-qt also works fine with weak machines".
Office apps
- RC comes with Libreoffice 4
Games
Steam for linux is now available in the repositories.
Education
Computer Assisted Music
Audio and MIDI Connection Kit
- JACK JACK 1.9.8 (jackit) and qjackctl its GUI (version 1.9.9 may be provided as update)
- lv2 lv2 (version 1.2.0) a plugin standard for audio system (the 1.4.0 version may be provided as update)
Multitrack audio recorder
- Ardour Ardour3 final release is now available (besides Ardour2) with lv2 interface
Instruments
- aeolus aeolus a church organ emulator
- Bristol Bristol (a vintage synthesizers emulator) is available with Menu items for each synthesizer
- Linuxsampler Linuxsampler 1.0 and Qsampler and gigedit (a sample editor) are available
- Yoshimi a software synthesizer version 0.0.60 (version 1.0 may be provided as update)
Sequencers
- Rosegarden Rosegarden 12.04 (just released 13.04 version may be proposed as update)
- Qtractor Qtractor 0.5.6 (just released version 0.5.8 may be proposed as update)
Score editors
- Lilypond Lilypond 2.16 (last stable edition)
- Musescore Musescore version 1.2 A GUI for Lilypond (just published version 1.3 may be provided as update)
- Rosegarden Rosegarden is a score editor too !
- denemo denemo 0.9.6 (just released 1.0.0 version may be provided as update)
Software Development
- MonoDevelop
- Gambas3
- LibYUI
- fdb
- OCaml is now in version 4.00.1, with more than 150 libraries
- Harbour Harbour is the free software implementation of a multi-platform, multi-threading, object-oriented, scriptable programming language, backward compatible with Clipper/xBase. This package also includes the QtContrib library and 'ready to use' HbIDE.
Upgrading from Mageia 2
The ability to perform an automated upgrade from Mageia 2 is available.
Upgrading online, using urpmi (CLI)
- First install the package mageia-prepare-upgrade from the core/updates_testing repository (this is for the usr move step, see bug 7451).
- Reboot using the entry "Mageia 3 Prepare Upgrade" at the bootloader.
then upgrade like usually.
- Remove all of the existing media sources on your system by executing this command as root in terminal:
su
urpmi.removemedia -a
- Add the Mageia online sources, either:
- Using the MIRRORLIST method (which will select a mirror automatically based on your geographical location):
su
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist http://mirrors.mageia.org/api/mageia.cauldron.$ARCH.list
- (Where $ARCH is either i586 or x86_64)
- Using a specific media mirror:
su
urpmi.addmedia --distrib <mirror_url>
- You can get the mirror_url using the Mageia mirrors web application
- Finally start upgrading:
su
urpmi --replacefiles --auto-update --auto
- It's best to run the above command twice as in the first run some packages maybe downloaded but not installed.
Using the Mageia 3 DVD to Upgrade
You can use the Mageia 3 DVD to do clean installs but also to upgrade from previous releases.
To upgrade:
- Download the ISO from the Mageia download page and burn it on a DVD, or dump it on a USB stick, for more details have a look at Available installation media article
- Boot the DVD and select "Install Mageia 3" from the GRUB (the bootloader) menu
- Select the upgrade option.
Check also our current bugs in the bugzilla.
Known issues
See Errata page
Tests wanted!
If not done yet, you can confirm or invalidate the currently reported (by the QA or other people) bugs: (see here or here a more complete list )
Bug reporting
You can find our bugzilla here, but please read the Errata before reporting any bugs. If you don't already have a Mageia account, you can create one at https://identity.mageia.org/. If you don't know how the procedure works, please read how to report a bug first.