[SOLVED] Manual downloads for Mageia RPMs/packages!

[tkmm]

I have been curious about where I can manually download RPMs/packages. For instance, after I upgraded from Mageia 1 to Mageia 2 and was left without my proper video and wifi driver... I re-instalIed Mageia 1 (so that I could have internet connectivity) and searched this forum to find that before rebooting I should have installed the kernel-firmware-nonfree package on Mageia 2. I then performed the upgrade again and before rebooting installed that package and the proper driver for my video card.

All is well now, but it would have been nice if I could have downloaded just those select packages and stuck them on a thumb drive so I could install them... Does the Mageia 2 Install CD/DVD lack the nonfree package/s as well?

I tried the Mageia 2 LiveCD and had similar issues with nonfree driver support. It would be a simple solution to be able to download packages from an ftp/http server, save them, and install them instead of being stuck in the situation of needing an internet connection to download the drivers needed to get a working internet connection... I realize that in some cases there may be dependencies that could present a challenge, but in this case the solution would have been simply solved by downloading and installing a single RPM.

I really enjoyed Mageia 1 for several reasons, one of which was that all my hardware (both free and non-free) worked well with the LiveCD and after installing from the LiveCD. (It also seemed to boot much faster than Mageia 2). I understand and even appreciate that Mageia is supporting the 'Free' software movement; my gripe is that it could be easier for users who decide to use non-free software to have access to it. If it isn't included on the install or live media I understand, but it seems overly complicated to have to install Mageia 1, upgrade to 2, and install non-free packages before rebooting to have a working and up-to-date system. In my case, I had to use this method because after the update to 2 my wifi wasn't supported.

I have a friend who has been using Ubuntu for quite some time now and has recently told me that he is ready to move on to a different distro, but wants something that is still fairly easy to use, works well out-of-the-box, and doesn't need to be command-line oriented. I have him interested in Mageia, but I think that the complications I've outlined above about getting a working system will be something that may turn users like him off when it comes to Mageia. I tried numerous distros before finally keeping Mageia 1(and now 2) and one of the things that I really liked about Mageia that kept me using it was that all my hardware was working correctly right from the liveCD - if it hadn't been I wouldn't have installed it I would be using a different distro (or still wrestling with FreeBSD).

I hesitate to recommend Mageia 2 to this friend of mine because I don't want him to dislike Mageia if things aren't working properly from the start; he is downloading Mageia 1 and if he likes it I told him I would help him with the upgrade to 2.

Thank you for allowing me to share my view of the downside to my favorite linux distribution. I look forward to being a long-time Mageia-ician and would like to acknowledge the hard work of the many people involved in this project. I hope that my criticism will be found constructive. Please consider my suggestion of hosting packages for manual download.

-tkmm

[Ken-Bergen]

Does this help?
http://mirrors.mageia.org/

[tkmm]

I browsed that link before posting, but I didn't find individual packages for download.

However, perusing through that rat-maze again I have found what I was looking for:

http://mirrors.kernel.org/mageia/distrib/2/i586/media/

I'm not sure how it escaped me earlier...

[doktor5000]

Please mark your thread as [SOLVED] then.