Here is the second alpha of Mageia 3 (released on 14th of october). This is alpha software. This means, it is NOT:

for daily use,
for any kind of productive use,
for writing any kinds of reviews.

It is a testing release for finding bugs, to look out for important missing packages, a platform for further development leading to the beta stage and finally our first official release planned in March 2013. More info about Mageia 3 development.

Download it

You can download it by selecting your mirror from http://mirrors.mageia.org/ and going into iso/cauldron or from http://www.mageia.org/3/ directly (easiest way).

Classical installer

2 DVDs 32 and 64 bits
- Mageia-3-alpha2-i586-DVD.iso
  - md5: 9033bf3719221495e3918a96c81c1467
  - sha1: e852c00d66d86f6db18f8e724dfc783307887d22
- Mageia-3-alpha2-x86_64-DVD.iso
  - md5: e9c8a654dcbb441b74ff2aa339dd1fd5
  - sha1: 78e2ea4778ce6a12a58963c6914cd13ff0f75e4f
- 100% free software inside, classical installer
- 3 main graphical environments (KDE, GNOME, LXDE)
- content will be added in coming release depending on reports
dual arch CD: one single iso with both 32 and 64bits
- Mageia-3-alpha2-dual-CD.iso
  - md5: 91c7f79ce588fca37b1c965020473c2e
  - sha1: e25982aa10144e9a5bb52fffb236485de697da89

We have now a new set of Live image

Live

2 Live CDs 32bits only in English
- Mageia-3-alpha2-LiveCD-GNOME-en-i586-CD.iso
  - md5: af8349d68744269c44af9c0c2320b26e
  - sha1: df4863609197a3bec9d734185320036f0b784abb
- Mageia-3-alpha2-LiveCD-KDE4-en-i586-CD.iso
  - md5: bd92d68bbefe6a516fb4398d73e3b1bc
  - sha1: cb575a3ac39b57df8e45d7a44cdece1acf3c3b5e

4 LiveDVDs (32 and 64bits) multilingual
- Mageia-3-alpha2-LiveDVD-GNOME-i586-DVD.iso
  - md5: 3123f1ba9b5b59bb0b08c21f93282938
  - sha1: 8a8acda547fc20a578c8ecd38d7cc8b000fa9844
- Mageia-3-alpha2-LiveDVD-KDE4-i586-DVD.iso
  - md5: c8625cad13c11edfa42da02d5d34159b
  - sha1: f9e34a78b663cd1c401245b822f5858fd1706bf4
- Mageia-3-alpha2-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso
  - md5: 76aa2f562cf1a11b632b24392e3ae056
  - sha1: bec52d29c18e756d5ff93c3d58ba5ec8f78fdffe
- Mageia-3-alpha2-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso
  - md5: 4d92cf22fbb9a6e8709099c7cdb1591b
  - sha1: 6e993dab96442458157bfe735f177e29dca7af3b

Major new features

Installation

Stage 1

The first stage of the installer will now automatically pass the right URL to stage2 if it was provided with eg http://foobar.com/mirrors/mageia/cauldron/ instead of http://foobar.com/mirrors/mageia/cauldron/x86_64

It now support loading installer from a btrfs file system.

A bug was fixed in kmod where it would make the installer not load the right driver for some hardware due to kmod not enforcing modules ordering (mga#5833).

Stage 2

Tokenring is no more supported. Installer can now drop a debug file on USB keys formated as NTFS instead of FAT (mga#5685). Resizing NTFS works again (it got broken by the switch from ntfsprogs to ntfs-3g) The installer has been updated for latest kernel/rpm/perl/pango/x11-server.

A "unselect all" button has been added when one choose to pick package groups, making faster to do a minimal installation.

Debugging

It's now possible to rebuild stage 1 & stage 2 packages with a debug option in order to have better environments in order to debug the installer.

Rescue

Rescue will preselect the higher version of Mageia when several Mageia instances have been installed.

Package management

RPM has been upgraded to 4.10.0 (4.10.1 in Cauldron).

Urpmi has been refactored and cleaned. Various bugs have been fixed :

urpmi used to download twice noarch packages when using --download-all option on 64 bit machines because they are in both 32 and 64bit 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 wrap some huge debug messages add use a scrollbar in such cases (mga#5118)

API change

The --repackage option has been removed (it was not working since rpm-4.6 was introduced in 2009). Repository metadata can now be compressed with XZ instead of gzip.

Security

Urpmi will now complain :

when a medium hasn't a 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 instead of being just command line option.

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 dependancies". The --merge-all-rpmnew option is slighty faster.

Base system

kernel

Mageia 3 Alpha 2 ships with kernel 3.5.5

systemd

Mageia 3 Alpha 2 comes with systemd 193

GRUB

Mageia 3 Alpha 2 still comes with GRUB as a default. But you can test GRUB2. Integration is in progress in installer and drakxtools. We hope to have it ready for alpha3.

File systems

OverlayFS is now available and used to build live CDs

Perl

Perl has been upgraded from 5.14.x to 5.16.1 and all perl packages have been rebuild and/or updated

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 quality of bug reports and allow easier support for profiling and user space tracing. We will get better bug reports by default, without users having to enable debug media and installing big debug packages.

It will also make it easier to do things like system wide profiling, userspace dynamic probes and causual debugging.

RPM groups

We started redesigning the groups of packages. Browsing through packages in rpmdrake was difficult, as several RPM groups contain too many packages.

Graphical environments

KDE

KDE 4.9.1 is now available in alpha 2. You should even be able to update to 4.9.2 in coming days.

Qt 4.8.3

Qt 5 Beta

QtCreator 2.5.2

GNOME

GNOME environment is also provided in its very last version, 3.6.

LXDE

RazorQt

Alpha 2 comes with RazorQt: "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

Alpha 2 comes with Libreoffice 3.6

Games

Education

Software Development

Artwork and design

New artwork is not yet integrated in this early stage of Mageia 3.

Upgrade from Mageia 2

For now, as said in the Errata, the upgrade from Mageia 2 is not available, as the Usr Move migration is still in progress. This functionality should be available in alpha 3 release.

Known issues

See Errata page

Tests wanted!

If not done yet, you can confirm or invalidate the current reported (by the QA or other people) bugs: (see here or here a biggest 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 on https://identity.mageia.org/. If you don't know, see how to report a bug.

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