Yet another praise of Beta3

[wobo]

Since Beta 3 arrived I did a lot of testing on various machines:

x86_64:
desktop with i7, nvidia, 8Gb ram
laptop with Core2Dual, nvidia, 4Gb ram, Atheros wifi

i586
netbook with Atom, intel graphics, 2Gb ram, Broadcom 4312 wifi

Almost everything went fine, no special issues (apart from the overall issue of dependencies and requirements, which is not bound to the Beta3). So I had no reason to write about Beta3 earlier.

Now I have a special reason: installation on my netbook. Not surprising that the system works. Not surprising that there are no issues with graphics. Even the easy way of wifi setup (after setting sources with cable connection and installing dkms-broadcom-wl) was something I expected. But what made me really happy and caused me to express my thx to the makers is the easy setup of Skype which is working out of the box with sound & video (built-in webcam), no need to change any settings or twiddle with the sound. Internal mic and speakers work as well as headset. This was not the only cause for praise and Skype is not my most used application either. But it made my day!

So, having a fully functioning device out of the box for mobile use is really something I appreciate! Well done!

[wilcal]

Since Beta 3 arrived I did a lot of testing on various machines...
...
Almost everything went fine, no special issues.....

I concur. M2B3 is very clean except for some minor
wrinkles. IMO even if released in it's present format
it would be very good. I can't wait for the RC.

[martinw]

I wish I could say the same. But I have two different notebooks that won't start X after a fresh install unless I manually select the vesa driver. One can be persuaded to work with the free radeon driver if the non-free radeon-firmware is installed, the other will only work with the proprietary fglrx driver (https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5426). This is a regression from beta 2.

My Broadcom wireless adapter wouldn't work with the wl driver - which the draktools are rather insistent on using, even if you try to teach them otherwise. There are now two competing free Broadcom wireless drivers in the kernel (b43 and brcmsmac), so you have to manually blacklist the one you don't want to use. I've now solved this problem by replacing my Broadcom wireless adapter with an Intel one, which worked out of the box once the firmware package was installed (and as a bonus, has a much better wireless range ).

With the Broadcom wireless, I had to manually disable the NetworkManager service, otherwise I got frequent disconnects. Haven't tried turning it back on - it just duplicates functionality provided by the Mageia network manager, so I'm not sure why it is enabled in the first place.

[roadee]

A little background. I started looking for a Mint 12 replacement a few months ago. I found a DVD I had laying around that had Mageia 1 from a magazine. I installed it on an external USB drive and my laptop which is an Acer Aspire with Core I5 2.67G, 6GB ram, Intel graphics and sound and Broadcom wireless.
After getting Mageia 1 up and running I saw you where in Beta testing for version 2. I wanted to try it on LiveCD so I wouldn't mess up the Mageia 1 install but the LiveCD never came out for Beta 2. When Beta 3 came out with the liveCD I downloaded and tested it on my laptop the first night it was available.
Everything worked! Correct screen resolution and the Broadcom 43225 wireless works perfectly. I installed the liveCD to the external drive and then installed Skype with the software installer to check sound and video with no problems.

The only problem I have had was the default screensaver would eat up all my resources and basically render the computer useless. I disabled the screensaver and that solved that problem.

I'm not sure that I'll install an RC when it comes out but I do plan on replacing the Mint 12 installed on my laptop internal drive with Mageia 2 when the final comes out.

The Mageia team has come a long way in a little over a year. Keep up the good work!