Introduction

Available installation media

Mageia has two distinct installation media types:

• DVD ISO and Dual-arch DVD ISO, which use the drakx traditional installer.
• Live DVD/CD ISO, a live ISO which can be used to preview the distribution and also later be used to install Mageia on your hard drive.

For more information have a look at the installation media page.

You will always find the download info on the Mageia download page; direct (ftp and http) and BitTorrent downloads are available.

The Mageia online repositories

The Mageia software sits in three different repositories/media, depending on the type of license applied to each package. Here's an overview of those repositories:

• Core: The Core repository includes packages with free-open-source software, i.e. packages licensed under a free-open-source license, the set of the "Core" media along with "Core Release" and "Core Updates" are available by default.
• Nonfree: The Nonfree repository includes packages that are free-of-charge, i.e. Mageia may redistribute them, but they contain closed-source software (hence the name - Nonfree). For example this repository includes nVidia and ATI graphics card proprietary drivers, firmware for various WiFi cards, etc.
  The Nonfree media set is added by default but not enabled by default.
• Tainted: The Tainted repository includes packages released under a free license. The main criteria for placing packages in this repository is that they may infringe on patents and copyright laws in some countries, e.g. multimedia codecs needed to play various audio/video files; packages needed to play commercial video DVD, etc.
  The Tainted media set is added by default but not enabled by default, i.e. it's completely opt-in; so check your local laws before using packages from this repository.
  This repository is only added for the convenience of the users. This repository is to Mageia what PLF is to Mandriva users or RPM Fusion is to Fedora users.

Major new features

Switch from Gtk+-2 to Gtk+-3

Most tools have been ported to Gtk+-3:

• drak3d
• drakpxelinux
• drakx-finish-install
• draklive-installer (the live installer)
• drakwizard
• drakxtools
• drakx (the classic installer)
• gurpmi
• mgaonline
• net_monitor
• rpmdrake
• transfugdrake
• userdrake

They now use more modern components and have access to all widgets through introspection or be used with Broadway.

Some related changes:

• diskdrake: now display ellipsized partition labels (the full labels are displayed through tooltips)
• net_applet: notifications work again for
• drakxservices: uses tooltips for service descriptions instead of an "info" button

Installation

• Stage 1
  • Stage1 has been converted from a custom initrd image to a dracut generated one
  • Stage1 is now dynamically linked
  • when building, a BOOT_AUTOMATIC_METHOD env variable enables to alter default boot options for easier debugging

• Stage 2
  • Work was done on RAID management during installation. This was quite buggy in previous releases and should now be usable at last.
  • GDM is no more automatically used for XFCE
  • logs now explain why updates are not offered when that happens
  • open-vm-tools are automatically installed on VMware hypervisor
  • network interfaces are renamed by udev during installation too
  • default entry is read & written back for Grub2
  • basic support for eMMc block devices (Luc Menut, mga#11812)
  • stage2 can be build with debug option in order to run installer from gdb, ...
  • drakx-in-chroot adds a new --depth option in order to force eg: 16bit colors mode
  • The package choose step was redesigned

Package management

RPM has been upgraded to 4.11.1. Urpmi has a new option --deploops that enables to debug circular dependencies.

Tools

Authentication

All tools have been ported from deprecated usermode to polkit when needing root privileges. Draksec now supports polkit rules editing for permissions and overrides restarts polkitd when needed.

Hardware support

On first boot, finish-install will no longer remove radeon-firmware or any network related firmwares as we don't know when some hw gets plugged that needs it.

Hardware detection has seen fixes: - a couple WiFi cards were misdetected - RAID devices are better handled

draksound no longer offers to switch from ALSA to OSS drivers.

drakclock will now configure chrony by default instead of ntpd for Network Time Synchronisation.

Other

Drakboot now write and read back the default entry when using Grub2.

Various bug fixes were done:

• LDAP configuration (bug #10005),
• firewall configuration not being applied (bug #9941)

Base system

syslinux

• syslinux has been updated to 6.02. This allows to get rid of very old patches and then use upstream version. Some fixes are in progress to fix localboot.

kernel

• Mageia 4 ships with kernel 3.12.8

systemd

• Mageia 4 comes with systemd 208

GRUB

• Mageia 4 still comes with GRUB as a default. But we also provide GRUB2.

Perl

• Perl has been upgraded to 5.18.1

Mesa

• Mesa has been upgraded to 10.0.2

Auto-completion Bash-completion is now installed as default (as a suggest so may not depending of the config). That mean that it bring autocompletion for cli command, like for example urpmi. urpmi vl<tab> will show all packages in the repositories that match vl*. That's also mean that if you want to install locale rpm you may use urpmi ./mypackage.rpm.

Network interfaces naming scheme

• Mageia has switched to the network interface naming scheme available in systemd v197+ to ensure they are predictable. A lot of bugs have been fixed to improve integration. We are looking for any feedback that could help to improve more if needed.

Graphical environments

MageiaWelcome

MageiaWelcome is now proposed as a default when opening a session in graphical environments. The main goal is to help new comers on Mageia but also give some information about the community and the project. Note that on Live System, MageiaWelcome is not auto launched.

X Window System (X11)

The X.org server has been updated from 1.13 to 1.14.5.

KDE

• KDE 4.11.4 (stable release) is now available.
• KDE screen management: we are now using kscreen as the tool to manage screen
• Qt 4.8.5

It has a specific Live-DVD or can be installed from the DVD ISO (Traditional installer).

GNOME

GNOME environment is also provided. Currently 3.10.2.1. It has a specific Live-DVD or can be installed from the DVD ISO (Traditional installer).

LXDE

It can be installed from the DVD ISO (Traditional installer).

XFCE

It can be installed from the DVD ISO (Traditional installer) or the Dual-arch DVD ISO.

RazorQt

It can be installed from the DVD ISO (Traditional installer).

Mate

Mate is now inside the repositories. It can be installed from the DVD ISO (Traditional installer).

Cinammon

Cinnamon is now inside the repositories. It can be installed from the DVD ISO (Traditional installer).

Office apps

• Mageia 4 comes with Libreoffice 4.1.3.2

• TeXLive was updated to a newer release, and is now split in 3 packages. If installing just texlive does not allow you to compile your TeX document, you may want to install the new package texlive-dist.

Games

Education

Software Development

• Mono 3.2.1

• Monodevelop 4.0.9

• Gambas3 3.4.2

• OCaml 4.01.0

• gcc 4.8.2

Upgrading from Mageia 3

Please read also the known issues.

Upgrading from Mageia 3 is supported, and has been fine-tuned over the past few months, so it should work. But as always, it is very advisable to back up any important data before upgrading and make sure you have made all updates of Mageia 3 (such as rpm and urpmi). Upgrading from Mageia 2 or another distribution is not supported.

There are several ways to upgrade from one of the previous Mageia releases:

Warning: Upgrading an existing install using a LiveCD is NOT supported due to the livecd image being copied "as is" to the target system.

Upgrading via the Internet

The Mageia update notification applet, Mageia Online, will notify you that a new Mageia release is available, and ask if you wish to upgrade. If you agree, the upgrade will be carried out from within your Mageia installation without any further steps being necessary.

If you have disabled the applet or it is not automatically running for some reason, you can upgrade manually either using the GUI (mgaonline) or the CLI (urpmi). Both methods are outlined below.

First make sure you have the latest updates for your currently running release prior to upgrading.

Upgrading online, using mgaonline (GUI)

If you do not see that mgaonline notifies you that there is a new release, check your options with mgaapplet-config

Or

su

mgaapplet-upgrade-helper --new_distro_version=4

It will notify you of the availability of the new Mageia 4 distribution, configure Mageia media sources and start migration.

Upgrading online, using urpmi (CLI)

You can also upgrade using urpmi from your favorite terminal emulator. Here are the general upgrade steps:

• 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.4.$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 may be downloaded but not installed.

Using the Mageia 4 DVD to Upgrade

You can use the Mageia 4 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 this Available installation media article
• Boot the DVD and select "Install Mageia 4" from the GRUB (the bootloader) menu
• Select the upgrade option.

It is recommended that the online repositories be set up during the upgrade as the DVD only includes a subset of the complete set of Mageia online repositories.

Moreover, it is possible that Mageia 3 may have received an update to a later version of software than that availale on the ISO. When this happens, the upgrade may fail to complete. Since, at the time the ISO's are tested it is impossible to anticipate which Mageia 3 packages may be updated in the future, offline upgrades (i.e. upgrades attempted without setting up the online repositories) are not supported.

On the first reboot use the command 'urpmi --auto-update' to make sure all packages were updated.

Known issues

See Errata page

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.

Obsoleted packages

KGraphViewer was removed as it was not building against new version of Graphiz and is dead upstream.