| Synopsis: Welcome to test Mageia pre-release After some internal testing we release alpha and beta versions officially for interested users. A preliminary schedule is at Mageia_10_Development. Please DO NOT use pre-releases for evaluation or important work! Problems *are* expected, especially with the alpha release. Mageia support several desktop systems, much hardware, and software. We can't test everything, and we are grateful for feedback. When you test, you also help to make the final version work on your system and usage. Remember that Mageia is fully community driven by individuals devoting our time. We release when we feel ready. For various ways to help out, see how to Contribute and a short description of our Teams. To get access to earlier test ISOs before they are official: until next round you should get used to work in our QA team, and then enroll here. |
Contents
Available installation media
We have Live, Classic installer, and Netinstaller in a few flavours each. For descriptions of them please see here in Release Notes.
Notes about pre-release testing them:
Live
Classic Installer
Netinstaller
- Netinstaller images are released asynchronously from other installer media. When reporting please state both date of the netinstaller file you downloaded (date listed on mirror then), and date you perform installation.
- Release repositories do change continuously!
Downloading
Find ISOs on https://www.mageia.org/10/ (will redirect you automatically to a mirror), or choose your favourite mirror and find ISOs at <mirror url>/mageia/iso/ for example http://mirror.accum.se/mirror/mageia/iso/). Netinstaller can be found at <mirror url>/mageia/distrib/$RELEASE/$ARCH/install/images/ (i.e http://mirror.accum.se/mirror/mageia/distrib/9/x86_64/install/images/).
Now all downloads are also linked from https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/alternative/, which also gives instructions to check the files.
Now torrent files are also available at mirrors and on the downloads page. If you use torrents you take a load off of our mirrors, and help distribute it to others. Plus it is a more reliable transfer method, especially on slow connections; it supports disrupted transfers well.
Remember to check the ISOs against checksums before using them, per instructions you get when downloading. Tip: If you use IsoDumper to write the ISOs to USB media, place the corresponding *.iso.sha3 and *.iso.sha3.gpg in the same folder as the *.iso, and IsoDumper will then perform checksumming of the *.iso and also check that the checksum file is signed correctly.
Also see Installation Media
Creating media
The .iso files are hybrid, which means they works both burnt to optical media as an image, or dumped to USB stick as image (which is not the same as copying it as as a file).
Note that Mageia 10 is in contrast to previous releases allowed to go beyond single layer DVD size, so the bigger ISOs may need dual-layer disc.
For USB stick: if you already run Mageia, IsoDumper is the tool. For other methods see here.
Testing
Do read first
- Read up on Current status below.
- This wiki you already is in now, provide a great deal of information, please look around. The Documentation portal is a good starting point.
What to test
- That it boots and works as expected. Tip: The Live is efficient to use to try various machines.
- Your favourite software we have in our repositories.
- Other software of interest - But do not "bug" us of issues not related to Mageia.
Updating
Now during development, packages are updated directly over elder packages in release repositories, and our updater tools look for updates there.
Upgrading from Mageia 9
Note this is not officially supported before final release, but if you like to test:
- You should be an experienced user.
- Do take backups of important files first!
- Follow normal upgrade procedures.
- And account for: Release repositories do change.
- Notable problems (read for workaround) at time of writing this:
Alternatively you may like to upgrade to Cauldron. Note that you would shortly after Mageia 10 release probably want to switch repositories from Cauldron to Mageia 10.
Found a problem?
- Do the problem go away after updating the system?
- See Current status, Current notes, and Expected problems below.
- Search for if it is already described in the Errata or if it is told in Release Notes.
- Then see if your problem seems to be described in Errata for our previous release - this may help you investigate further and maybe reopen a bug or make a fresh one depending on what seem suitable.
- Browse and communicate on our forum - to ask, get guidance, help other, supply ideas.
- For reporting a bug, this is a great guide.
Current status
- Do read the Release Notes and Errata - Note that they naturally are a work in progress at this time.
- Check our forum.
- See our bugzilla to see what is cooking. Like for any such project, don't be overwhelmed by the number of bugs processing... it is a huge project and there are no bugs for everything that works ;-)
Current notes
To be revised at each pre-release release (remove old stuff), and updated any time needed.
Revised 2026-01-27
Current version of ISOs: 10alpha1 (from internal round 2)
Prominent enhancements comparing to Mageia 9
- Updated applications, desktops, basesystems, drivers, kernel...
For more complete list see Release Notes.
10alpha1
- Kernel series: default is 6.12.63 LTS (so used in Live ISOs). Available in repos: 6.18.7+ LTS
Upcoming next pre-release - 10beta1
- Classic installer wifi support mga#32125
- Updated hardware detection
- Kernel 6.18 LTS as default
- Several hundred packages
Expected problems
Release repositories do change
When Mageia release, the "release" repositories are locked from changes. But now during development, packages are updated over elder packages in that same repository (instead of being added in the updates repositories). We may also add or remove packages. This have various effects:
- Netinstaller may fail because of changed repository content during install. Remedy: start again.
