Mageia forum

I just want a little understanding about the backports policy. The policy I have read is here https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Backports_policy and it is clear regarding singular packages.

How does this policy apply to more global packages such as KDE, gnome, XFCE? For instance if KDE 4.9 is released 3 months in to this new Mageia release how and when would it become available in Mageia 2?

That policy is actually kind of a draft/placeholder/discussion basis and currently not effective. Currently backports are not open, and probably due to our QA and sysadmin team being quite short on staff there are not much chances the situation will improve in due time. There could probably be an exception for updates to XFCE, because it was basically unmaintained and the work on it started too late during Mageia 2 release process where freeze was long effective. But for huge monsters like KDE or GNOME there will probably zero chances for backports. You know, a stable and reliable system made out of quality packages is our top priority.