First impressions of Mageia 1

[msdobrescu]

But since we're talking about "first impressions" ... what are the Oxygen artists thinking? They could not have made the blue folder icons look more clunky and scary if they had tried to. It's a shame that most other icon themes are incomplete, so unfortunately it's not as simple as choosing a different theme. I'll just have to learn to live with Oxygen, as I did in Mandriva ...

To me, Oxygen theme and icons look sleek and professional, comparable to the original Apple themes.
Well, it's a matter of taste...
I think that Mageia look is much better than Mandriva's.

[msdobrescu]

Speaking about intuitive icons, since Mandriva times, I tend to setup KDE from MCC shortcut and vice-versa. Why? Just because, in my mind, I associate that screw drive and Elephant key with the system settings and the screen/display to the KDE.

What do you think of that?

[Akien]

That's right, those two icons are not really intuitive.
That could justify a bug report, no? (as en enhancement)

[msdobrescu]

That's right, those two icons are not really intuitive.
That could justify a bug report, no? (as en enhancement)

I don't know. It is debatable.
Actually, the System Settings icon is the original KDE icon and it is attached to the KDE Settings, so, basically it is their icon. Is it just a coincidence that these two shortcuts seem reversed?

It'd be a feature request, rather...

[apkerr]

Hello,

I've been thinking about migrating my day-to-day computing off of Windows for a while now. As an Information Technology student I understand how important Linux skills are going to be to my employability in the future (currently working on Centos 5.6 in my first job placement). I took a Linux course last semester using Fedora and had a Ubuntu partition on my laptop to mess around with. I wasn't paying much attention last time I updated Ubuntu and suddenly I had this foreign desktop with weird and non-intuitive (to me) workflow issues and I decided it was time to try something new.

Well, I figured if I was going with something new, I might as well go with something new. I've never used Mandrake so Mageia is completely new for me. I downloaded the 64-bit Mageia 1 Gnome Live CD. At first I thought I'd try it using Virtual Box in Ubuntu but VB didn't want to start for some reason so I decided to just wipe Ubuntu out and go clean.

Install was very smooth and fast. Partitioning was intuitive. Sound card worked right from the start. Wireless connected right away. Looks great.

I did have one issue. I thought I'd try to print a test page but my printer didn't show up when I plugged it in. In fact, system-config-printer wasn't even installed. Is it because I didn't have my printer plugged in when the installer removed "unnecessary" hardware packages? I started the software manager and it didn't have any packages for printers. I thought that was kind of weird and after a bit of clicking around I realized that the default repositories only included Updates. The first time I clicked on Add to add a new repository it brought up all the mirror sites and auto-selected the Release repository so once I enabled that one I had no trouble installing the printer software. Adding the printer itself was easy.

I might suggest that printers are common enough that the installer's auto-hardware-package removal tool might want to leave system-config-printer installed even if there isn't a printer currently plugged in. Either that or have the Install & Remove Software tool have the Release repository enabled by default along with Update.

Of course, it could be that I actually chose the options that caused my problems. I wasn't really paying that much attention.

Looking forward to using Mageia,

Andrew

[Akien]

I might suggest that printers are common enough that the installer's auto-hardware-package removal tool might want to leave system-config-printer installed even if there isn't a printer currently plugged in. Either that or have the Install & Remove Software tool have the Release repository enabled by default along with Update.

I agree that it would be really annoying that the installer removes system-config-printer. Could someone confirm that this bug happens? (I installed Mageia twice from the 32-bit DVD, and I do have system-config-printer installed even if my printer was not plugged, but the DVD installer does not use this auto-removal tool).

Still, Core Release should be activated if you configured the media sources during the install. By default, all media sources are added, and Core Release, Core Updates, Nonfree Release and Nonfree Updates are activated (see the release notes: http://mageia.org/en/1/notes/#install).

I hope you will enjoy using Mageia!

[ahmad]

I have slightly mixed impressions.
There are several differences from Mandriva that take a little getting used to. Some of the configurations got moved from the KDE system settings to the MCC. Not life-threatening, but an annoyance to experienced users. New users wouldn't be looking for it somewhere else, so that's alright.

Could give an example? AFAIK, nothing was/could be moved from systemsettings to drakconf (mcc)...

[Max]

I have slightly mixed impressions.
There are several differences from Mandriva that take a little getting used to. Some of the configurations got moved from the KDE system settings to the MCC. Not life-threatening, but an annoyance to experienced users. New users wouldn't be looking for it somewhere else, so that's alright.

Could give an example? AFAIK, nothing was/could be moved from systemsettings to drakconf (mcc)...

Adding additional keyboard layouts used to be done in the KDE System Settings, now it's done through the MCC.
Also setting up the screen size can only be partially done through the KDE System Settings. If I want a screen size other than the 4 provided there I need to do it in the MCC.
Like I said, nothing life-threatening, but an annoyance.

[ahmad]

I have slightly mixed impressions.
There are several differences from Mandriva that take a little getting used to. Some of the configurations got moved from the KDE system settings to the MCC. Not life-threatening, but an annoyance to experienced users. New users wouldn't be looking for it somewhere else, so that's alright.

Could give an example? AFAIK, nothing was/could be moved from systemsettings to drakconf (mcc)...

Adding additional keyboard layouts used to be done in the KDE System Settings, now it's done through the MCC.

Not really, these are two different tools the kcm module in systemsettings and drakkeyboard; these two have co-existed for a very long time, no functionality was moved from systemsetting to drakkeyboard...

Also setting up the screen size can only be partially done through the KDE System Settings. If I want a screen size other than the 4 provided there I need to do it in the MCC.
Like I said, nothing life-threatening, but an annoyance.

Again this has always been the case since the first release of KDE4, i.e nothing new..

Anyway, since you don't have a problem, no need to pursue the issue any further, I guess.

[apkerr]

Still, Core Release should be activated if you configured the media sources during the install. By default, all media sources are added, and Core Release, Core Updates, Nonfree Release and Nonfree Updates are activated (see the release notes: http://mageia.org/en/1/notes/#install).

I hope you will enjoy using Mageia!

The first time I clicked on "Configure Media" in the Control Center the list only included Core Updates (enabled + updates checked), Nonfree Updates (enabled + updates checked, I think), and Tainted Updates (disabled). When I clicked on "Add" and "Full Set of Sources" the mirror list came up with a bunch of things already checked including Core Release.

Although I don't remember doing anything that would have disabled Core Release, it's certainly possible that I did.

Andrew

[aselluza]

I made an online update from mandriva 2010.2 to mageia 1 in my netbook to try it and it was so easy and so nice to find everything i tried up to the moment working! my only problem was vmware player, but i downloaded the last version, installed it and... great, it works perfectly! so i'm really happy. it looks almost the same as mandriva for most important things, which makes it very easy to me for configuration, etc. now i'll start to customize it a bit more only disapponting thing (not so much, just a toy i love) is that faces of faces-penguin are not recognized so my users appear with no icon in kdm. as you see, not a serious problem, but if it's solved and we get a faces-penguin version working for mageia with all its funny penguins there i'll be very pleased
great job!!!! i guess after i try it a bit more it'll become my main OS working in my desktop too

[isadora]

Very welcome to the Mageia-forum aselluza!!!

New package requests can be made through:
https://bugs.mageia.org/enter_bug.cgi?p ... mat=guided

[aselluza]

Very welcome to the Mageia-forum aselluza!!!

New package requests can be made through:
https://bugs.mageia.org/enter_bug.cgi?p ... mat=guided

thanx a lot. in fact, today i realized kdm works fine with faces-penguin, i jast had to choose the icon i wanted for each user, so now my loved penguins are there smiling in kdm

[tarazed]

Yes, this is a wonderful distribution. My first impressions are
overwhelmingly positive. A thousand thanks to all the developers for
taking on such a Herculean task.

I upgraded my Virgin Media broadband to 50 MHz so that the ISO could
be downloaded in a comfortable 40 minutes. Installed on a laptop for
evaluation. That went pretty smoothly and the GNOME desktop came up
looking just like always. The only problem that I encountered was my
first attempt at an upgrade from Mandriva 2010.1. Not having read the
note about migration the whole thing ended up a sorry mess after two
hours but restarting with a full install put everything back on track
in about 40 minutes. Thereafter the only problems have been of the
PEBCK type - after 48 years programming and handling computers I still
know nothing.

Anyway, these few days have made it clear that Mageia 1 can be
installed on my main desktop system without any worries.

And thanks also to the rest of this friendly community.

Viva Mageia!

[quartz]

I'd just like to add my voice to this thread.

I've used Mandriva for a couple of years, and have recently installed Mageia 1 on both desktop and laptop. Having read about upgrade difficulties I did a clean install, and they went very smoothly and quickly. The only difficulty was I had to download an extra package to make the Broadcom wireless work, and it took a certain amount of googling to learn that I had to do this. This was puzzling, as the same wifi had worked out of the box under Mandriva.

Still, now that's sorted, I can print, I can connect to my server machine, share files etc very easily with minimal setting up.

Well done on a distro that works superbly and looks good too. (looks even better after installing qtcurve but that's just my opinion).

Quartz.