Welcome, and feel free to introduce yourself

[isadora]

Well, I couldn't find a place devoted just to introducing ourselves, so I made this post. If I was wrong in doing so, please forgive me...................
......................................................
Edit:
Whoops. i didn't even see this. Guess my old eyes are getting worse. Sorry for the mistake.

Don't worry, be happy.

[anshuljain]

Hi all,
Im a long time ex-Mandriva user and have been using Ubuntu/openSUSE till now...and glad to be back with Mageia

-Anshul

[dubigrasu]

Ohooo, glad to see you here Anshul. Lots of Mandriva users here
Welcome!

[mrtommy]

Hi im a Ex mandriva user and u have used a lot of other distributions like ubuntu fedora opensuse gentoo and sabayon arch slackware pclinuxos and more...
But i tried Mageia a few days ago and this will be my main distro, i like it very much...

Im a big distro hopper but maybe that can end now, thank you for this great experience...

Im a guy from Sweden by the way.

[zkat]

Howdy! I'm Steve and I'm Texas, USA. Seems I'm the about the only one here that hasn't used Mandriva. Been using Linux for years, starting in the 90's, but never used Mandriva. But, I've used about all the rest at one time or another. Been using Debian for awhile and chose Mageia for something different. Plan to have Debian and Mageia co-exist on the hard drive. I have nothing but good things to say about Mageia . Mageia exceeds by expectations. It's a keeper and I plan on being here awhile.

[anshuljain]

Ohooo, glad to see you here Anshul. Lots of Mandriva users here
Welcome!

Thanks dubigrasu....great to see the MDV guys here

[Germ]

Hi Anshul.

[rc2011]

Well I missed this thread. Said my hello here viewtopic.php?f=4&t=397

No need to click it or for me to retype it all. Just glad to see Mageia coming along nicely. Good job to all those who had a hand in making Mageia a reality.

[masinick]

Hi im a Ex mandriva user and u have used a lot of other distributions like ubuntu fedora opensuse gentoo and sabayon arch slackware pclinuxos and more...
But i tried Mageia a few days ago and this will be my main distro, i like it very much...

Im a big distro hopper but maybe that can end now, thank you for this great experience...

Im a guy from Sweden by the way.

I think the software is good enough to use as an every day system, but stopping distro hopping may take significant detoxification!

[madpuppy]

Hello, I have been a Linux User since mandrake 5.3 Festen, I have never strayed too far from it. I have tried other distro's and always test and play with as many distros that I can to see what is "cooking" in the world of Linux but, I have never been enticed away from the cool blue that is Mand/rake/riva. Like I imprinted on it that day all those years ago, to me, even with it's flaws it still "felt" good to use as opposed to everyone else. To me, Mageia is Mandrake/riva's
heart, what is left of mandriva is a familiar shell run by strangers. almost like an alien wearing the skin of someone familiar. The heart and mind of mandriva...the things that made it wonderful and familiar are right here...Rising from the ashes of foolish corporate whims and poorly executed decisions, magically, the heart and mind found that the shell that discarded them was more like an iron maiden coercing them in directions that were not good for the users as well as the heart and mind. So, rather that being discarded by the the shell, the heart has become something new as well as familiar. In the long run, Magia has become the ideal and rather than the skin discarding them it is the "skin" of Mandriva corporate control and lack of direction that has been shed. Something new...but, very familiar.

I look forward to being a new/old user of mageia. as far as I am concerned I never really left.

[dubigrasu]

Rising from the ashes of foolish corporate whims and poorly executed decisions, magically, the heart and mind found that the shell that discarded them was more like an iron maiden coercing them in directions that were not good for the users as well as the heart and mind.

Wow!...are you a writer, poet perhaps?
Welcome to Mageia madpuppy.

[madpuppy]

Nah, just an unemployed truck driver and dirty end user.

Think of me as the Buckaroo Banzai of slackers.

[dubigrasu]

Think of me as the Buckaroo Banzai

There is some resemblance yes

[lstench]

Hello, name is lstench and I will be sticking around here for a while

[melloe]

Howdy, I'm Melloe
Long time Linux user, and ran a computer club alongside my shop after I retired a few times from the Military, State Department , University..in that order. ( Yes I am that old chronologically...not in spirit ).
Mandriva user ( among others ) and Mandrake before that from about the first. Did the testing of Mageia through to the final..running it on the test box. Had a few rough spots on the way, on a couple different boxes, but the final was fine.

[andre]

Hi everyone, I'm Andre, from Portugal.

I've been a Linux user for some 5 or 6 years. I used Ubuntu until 10.04, then it messed up my netbook, so I switched to PCLinuxOS and I loved KDE (I was a Gnome fanboy). Earlier this year I missed the Ubuntu repos, so I switched to Kubuntu. Last Saturday I found out Mageia (KDE) and replaced Kubuntu on my Desktop so I could test it, but didn't have the time to test it. Yesterday, I was at work (I run my mother's herbal shop) and Kubuntu started behaving strangely in my AAOne netbook (with all the shop's documents, contacts, etc. in it), and I thought I would lose it. Thankfully I still had the Mageia 1 ISO with me, so I quickly backed up and created a live usb, just before X stopped working.
Home is in it's own partition, so I installed quickly and didn't even need my backups. It even recognized my GPRS modem (Kubuntu wouldn't work unless I installed Gnome Network Manager).
The only complaint so far is having to enable the tainted repos to enable Broadcom wireless (there should be an option during installation to enable the tainted repos and install the most common restricted stuff, like in the ubuntu family).

Anyway, here I am! I hope Mageia will grow and be the best distro, the best community or, hopefully, both.

[masinick]

Hi everyone, I'm Andre, from Portugal.

I've been a Linux user for some 5 or 6 years. I used Ubuntu until 10.04, then it messed up my netbook, so I switched to PCLinuxOS and I loved KDE (I was a Gnome fanboy). Earlier this year I missed the Ubuntu repos, so I switched to Kubuntu. Last Saturday I found out Mageia (KDE) and replaced Kubuntu on my Desktop so I could test it, but didn't have the time to test it. Yesterday, I was at work (I run my mother's herbal shop) and Kubuntu started behaving strangely in my AAOne netbook (with all the shop's documents, contacts, etc. in it), and I thought I would lose it. Thankfully I still had the Mageia 1 ISO with me, so I quickly backed up and created a live usb, just before X stopped working.
Home is in it's own partition, so I installed quickly and didn't even need my backups. It even recognized my GPRS modem (Kubuntu wouldn't work unless I installed Gnome Network Manager).
The only complaint so far is having to enable the tainted repos to enable Broadcom wireless (there should be an option during installation to enable the tainted repos and install the most common restricted stuff, like in the ubuntu family).

Anyway, here I am! I hope Mageia will grow and be the best distro, the best community or, hopefully, both.

Hi Andre, welcome to the forum.

You raise an interesting point that bears discussion - and perhaps even a re-evaluation of policy.

I am all for using completely free software whenever and wherever possible. However, in the case of hardware recognition, sometimes it simply is not practical to use entirely free software because many binary packages containing firmware still exist and adequate replacements or alternatives are not available. I am all for making completely free alternatives available, and when they are, and they work acceptably well, they should be the default. But in cases where not providing non-free binary blobs would cause difficulty, in such cases, pragmatism makes much more sense. I don't mind segregating non-free from free, and providing free as the first option, but non-free ought to be automatic when it cannot be configured at the present time in any other way.

Are we the only two that feel this way, or merely the only two willing to speak up?

Debian had some good debates about these topics in 2009 and concluded to do what I am proposing: to make non-free available, even on a CD or DVD, offer free as the first choice when it's available, but include non-free (even as default) when it isn't.

In Richard Stallman's view, doing this "taints" the software, in his opinion. When his team is able to figure out a way to keep up with hardware firmware changes, his view can pervade - and it's certainly a worthwhile goal to shoot for. But dogmatically sticking to it, in my opinion, is counter productive, and it keeps many otherwise willing people away from trying the software because they have to gather too much from multiple sources, and many of them therefore consider it "broken". I therefore propose to aim toward Stallman's goal of all free software, but use a practical, pragmatic approach: go free when it's there, use what's necessary when it's not in order to provide the broadest hardware support possible.

[jkerr82508]

Are we the only two that feel this way, or merely the only two willing to speak up?

You are not. The subject has been discussed on the mailing lists.

to make non-free available, even on a CD or DVD

That is my understanding of what is being considered for Mageia 2. It requires a change to the installer, so that a choice can be made whether or not nonfree software should be installed.

http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=iso2 ... #installer

Jim

[wobo]

You raise an interesting point that bears discussion - and perhaps even a re-evaluation of policy.
[.....]
Are we the only two that feel this way, or merely the only two willing to speak up?

No, this has been discussed almost from the start of Mageia until today in all possible variations and at all possible places - still the issue comes up again and again. This is not surprising because different opinions are equally spread among the community and whichever way the decision of the council/board/whoever is, it will not satisfy everybody.

The issue is known and of course there are various possible solutions (just one example among others: extra non-free driver/firmware ISO) but all were either rejected because of various reasons or require more ressources (aka manpower & time) than we have at the moment.

The current way is to use one of the live cds for installations, they include the needed non-free stuff.

Plans for Mageia 2 are also dealing with this issue.

[masinick]

Thanks for those quick replies - not one, but two of them. Obviously I touched a nerve there. Thanks for the quick explanations.

[wobo]

Obviously I touched a nerve there.

No, it's just that this has been touched so often that matching replies are almost "pre-configured".

[masinick]

Obviously I touched a nerve there.

No, it's just that this has been touched so often that matching replies are almost "pre-configured".

I am probably pretty typical of a forum user, in the sense that I do follow a few threads, but I don't go through the entire site unless I am specifically looking for something. I am not surprised that things like this come up over and over again. It's the nature of the beast when it comes to forum software. The average individual is simply going to write about what's on their mind, or respond to what they've read. That's what I did in this case - welcoming a new member, then commenting that I agreed with his thoughts on accessing non-free firmware. Glad to hear that it's reached enough attention that it's probably bothering some people with its frequency.

At least whatever decision that is made over time will be one that's been made with consideration of multiple points of view, and I can live with that. I probably would not have spotted it for quite a while (until some day when I'd get poking around, searching, and accidentally stumble across it), so I appreciate your willingness to fill me in on the background. Thanks for the additional background.

[wobo]

You're welcome, that's what I was born for!

[Malabi]

Hi, nice too meet ya. =D
My name is Alex, and i'm from Brazil, Paquetá Island / Rio de Janeiro. I've started my adventure on Linux in 1996 when i purchased an magazine called CD Expert. The magazine came with Connectiva Linux 6.0 and was my first experience using the system.

Since then, i've used some distributions, and my favorites are Debian and Mandriva. I've heard about the Mageia project on Under-Linux.org foruns, and i was curious to try it. Just one word: Fantastic. ^^

I hope to make friends and help with anything that i can. =D

[]'s,

Note: Sorry about my english. ^^''
o/

[Garthhh]

It's all Masinick's fault
I follow Brian's Distro testing on his Blog at IT Toolbox http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/brians-blog/mageia-1-is-a-day-away-from-release-june-1-planned-for-the-first-release-46427

I came to linux in 08 after the HDD on my old notebook started to go bad & was about to have to pay again for XP
once I installed ubun 8.04 I was hooked
I switched to mint & the wireless worked for the 1st time ever
back to ubun after getting treated badly on the mint forum for pointing out that grsync wouldn't work across my home network
I started following along on several threads about the new Unity DE [desk top environment], which doesn't suit my work flow
they way the decision was made[to develop a new DE] & how it was implemented, makes me question the direction that distro might take

I went on a search for a new DE & possibly a new distro
I was hoping for the whole package
a distro & a community
the sponsorship is also important
the past few years have highlighted the problematic relationship of FOSS with corporate overlords
Open Office morphed into Libre Office, oracle couldn't understand the value
I'm gathering that there is a similar situation here, Mandriva SA not really understanding the community

I think Mageia will offer a good mix of bleeding edge [caldron] & stability