Mandrake / Mandriva / Mageia 5

**2635599** · November 1st, 2015 05:32 PM

Mandrake / Mandriva / Mageia 5

need an opinion. years ago when i was thinking of switching windows for linux mandrake is what
i liked out of the various versions our. over the years it's branched off to become mandriva and
now mageia. i would like to know what you guys know and think about it.

https://www.mageia.org/en/5/

**2635599** · November 6th, 2015 03:19 PM

BUMP no one?

**chenzen666** · November 6th, 2015 08:08 PM

not tried mageia 5 yet but i liked the first version . I still use mandriva powerpack 2009.1 as it does all that i want except play games...

the new version does look nice and has loads of repositries so you can get other software that you might want .

i will test this out over the weekend and report back.

**2635599** · November 6th, 2015 08:45 PM

Originally Posted by chenzen666

not tried mageia 5 yet but i liked the first version . I still use mandriva powerpack 2009.1 as it does all that i want except play games...

the new version does look nice and has loads of repositries so you can get other software that you might want .

i will test this out over the weekend and report back.

chenzen666 cool, much appreciated, looking forward to your feedback, thanks a lot.

**Shemhamforash** · November 6th, 2015 09:04 PM

I saw your question, but I wasn't sure how to answer because I've not used this distribution. From looking it up and reading some details about it Mageia is the fork of Mandrake and it's a popular distribution on Distrowatch, usually a good sign. The problem I have with this distribution is this here:
"Mageia is planned to be released on a 9-month release cycle, with each release to be supported for 2 cycles, that is 18 months."

Whereas with Ubuntu and Mint have cycles described here:
"Every fourth release, issued on a two-year basis, would receive long-term support (LTS). LTS releases get regular point releases with support for new hardware and integration of all the updates published in that series to date. Since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, desktop support for LTS releases was increased to five years."

I think with Mint it's somewhat easy and troublefree to update to new versions once it's already installed. Ubuntu you're looking at reinstalling the whole OS. Apparently it's doable on Mageia as well:

"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."

So you'd be looking at doing major system updates every year and a half.
Looking at their software management options it appears they have put a lot of work into the software centers and they look very refined and professional.
Then it says here: "urpmi is Mageia's command line tool for managing packages and repositories (media)." Now I don't know how many distributions use this tool but I haven't before, and distributions like Ubuntu or Mint have nice software centers as well and using the apt-get command in a terminal is the method I would use. My point is, it seems like you may need to learn quite a few distro-specific things if you're using Mageia rather than a Debian based distribution where there is an umbrella of a lot of similar distributions that use the same command line tools.

I personally don't like having any software preinstalled on my system because I want to know what exactly is on it so I may be able to solve new problems or fix something that is broken. This is why I use Arch but it's a hardcore distro that's for people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty and delve deep into the system.

Overall Mageia's a good choice and you've got all the desktop environments to choose from, they mention on their website that KDE is their most popular one. Hope this helps a bit.

**2635599** · November 6th, 2015 10:26 PM

Shemhamforash yeah i like megeia simply because it's a distro i'm already pretty familiar with, with it being previously mandrake/mandriva. then you add the fact that you can do a in-place upgrade when with ubuntu you have to do a fresh install each time. as far as i'm concerned they can update every 3 months as long as i don't have to do a fresh install EVERY time. as you mentioned as a added bonus it has multiple desktop environments that you can switch from within the os even after your initial choice during installing.