Slickster wrote:How does this work and whats the usefulness?im new here.
If you are interested in development or just looking at what's possibly ahead, then you could try the DVD on a machine. Just make sure to backup your system, or swap/trade drives if it'a a working/important machine (in case you run into problems while testing-out the alpha).
If you have been running into problems installing current or past versions on your computer, or a computer you know has problems installing mageia, it may be worth your time to try-out the alpha. If the alpha works, then great (it means that the problem(s) you had with a past version got fixed), if not, then alphas are a good place to indicate you have a problem and hopefully this gets merged into the upcoming release.
If you find a problem installing the alpha, be sure to file a bug report such as:
mageia alpha 3 - problem with install at point xyz
or
mageia alpha 3 - problem with application abc
The reasons for trying out alphas is to try and shake-out possible problems before you get to the point where the distro says:
"We've released Mageia 2"
If you are uncertain of being able to do this safely without risking your data, maybe it is best for you not to try risking your existing setup, but if you are confident of your skills, and are able to safely backup and restore your computer(s) plus have a little bit of free time available to try out an experimental alpha, then, why not give it a try?
Posted: Jan 12th, '12, 22:32