Some brief comments on Mageia 3

[jiml8]

I can break any operating system out there. I don't set out to break them, but it is in the nature of the work that I do that I wind up pushing my system to its absolute limits - and often, beyond.

I used to break my Mandriva 2010 distro at regular intervals, usually while working in my Windows 7 Pro virtual machine hosted in VMware Workstation. Part of the problem was VMware, but a big part of the problem was in the Linux host. I migrated from Mandriva 2010 32 bit to Mageia 2 64 bit (on the same hardware) early this year, and Mageia 2 was also easy to break - and had some bugs that were very irritating to me.

Fast forward to a month ago. I changed my motherboard in order to expand my RAM to 32 GB...which was needed because I kept running out of memory at 8 GB and I projected an immediate need for 20 GB. At about the same time as the mobo change, I replaced Mageia 2 with Mageia 3.

Mageia 3 on this system is the most reliable and solid Linux system I have had in many years. To this point, I have not managed to crash it - not once. And, when you consider that I have had as many as 9 virtual machines up and running in this box at the same time, it is saying something that the host has not crossed its eyes and died at all, ever. I have had virtual machines get torn up and on more than one occasion I have had to tear VMware Workstation out by its roots and restart it, but I have been able to do this on this platform - and on all earlier versions of Linux, I would have been forced to reboot to clean things up.

I run a very, very heavy system. I have a full-up KDE4 environment with all the toys. I run compiz, with all the toys. I like my wobbly windows, I like the desktop cube, I like having the front window fade when I mouse over a window behind it, I like seeing different effects when windows open and close. I make heavy use of expo mode as a productivity tool. I use skype with family and friends. I stream a lot of flash videos. Kmail is central to my business (and in KDE 4.8 it was a freaking nightmare!) and I need it to work reliably.

And, I run virtual machines. Lots and lots of virtual machines. I run several versions of OpenSUSE (both 32 bit and 64 bit), including some very highly customized systems, in VMs. I run Knoppix, Windows 7, Fedora, Windows 2000, Debian, Ubuntu...all in VMs and mostly for business purposes.

I do kernel development and driver development for embedded systems, and I frequently have heavy compiles going, usually in a VM, but often enough in the mageia host.

This system is VERY stable and reliable. I am extremely pleased with it.

Now, there were and are some issues. Not many and most not too serious. Specifically, I could not convince Mageia 3 to report the disk drives in the system in the order I wanted them reported. So I had to change fstab to mount partitions by label, then label each partition the way I wanted it detected. Thus, for instance, my system partition is known by Mageia3 as sdd1, but I have it labeled as I want it (for historical reasons) which is sdc1.

Also, Mageia 3 chose to use up to 16 GB of my RAM for /tmp...I don't think I told it to do that, and if I did, it was inadvertant. I want /tmp on disk. I fixed it, but I had to fix it.

When I first deployed Mageia 3, VMware Workstation would not start which forced me to roll back to Mageia 2 because I cannot function without VMware Workstation. A workaround was found, and when I rolled forward again, employing the workaround got me going.

I use two copies of gkrellm on one desktop in order to keep an eye on a lot of system functions. Gkrellm keeps crashing at odd intervals.

Finally, Mageia 3 does not set up loop devices when it starts. I really need to report that one as a bug.

Beyond that, there's a problem with xorg...memory leak, and I don't know where it comes from, but it causes me to restart X about once a day. I doubt that this is a Mageia problem...probably is upstream.

KDE 4.10 is a vast, vast improvement over KDE 4.8 and is about as reliable as the KDE 4.4 that was on my Mandriva 2010 (I had declined to migrate kmail to akonadi/nepomuk at that point...it was forced on me in KDE 4.8 and by itself almost caused me to ditch KDE).

This is also the first Linux system I've had in which I could turn on the AMD Cool n quiet power management system and have it work correctly.

The upshot is that this system is very smooth and very solid. It is fun to work with, with few annoyances to distract my attention or force me to do odd things in order to get my work done. I am quite sure that some of this is due to the BIOS on my motherboard, but most of it has to be due to Mageia 3.

Great job, folks!

My system, for reference, presently consists of an ASUS Sabertooth FX990 R2 motherboard, Phenom-II 955 (overclocked) quad-core processor, 32 GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical 8x8x8x24 RAM (overclocked), NVidia GT-240 (using driver from Nvidia site), Coolermaster GX-750 power supply, Adaptec 79320 SCSI host adapter, 5 ultra-320 SCSI drives, 1 SATA drive, 1 DVD burner.

[pete910]

Thought I was bad running two to three vbox vm's .... But as you've found, it's been rock solid with me also!( Learning rpm package building )

But nice to see its working well for you too. Came from Mandriva to Mageia myself whem Mga 2 came out.

Have been thinking of an upgrade myself, what's your views on the asus board and linux compatibility?

Running a gigabyte 890fx-ud5, Phenom II x6 1090t cpu and a HD5870 at the moment. (Don't mean to stray off topic )


Pete

[KnightMB]

Good to hear, I keep all my friends and family on Mageia 2 at the moment, many are heavy gamers (using wine most of the time). I am about to upgrade my wife to Mageia 3, she is also that heavy "windows gamer" but so far everything she plays (loves those hidden object games) all work in wine without any issues for most of them (save resolution has to be reset after exiting some games).

So if a heavy power user like yourself is pleased, then I feel more confident in getting the rest of the family and friends on board with the new version, so the post and details was really appreciated!