This was my home desktop PC, Intel Celeron 3300 processor, 2GB memory, Sapphire HD4350, 250GB SATA HD WD Caviar. Before installation I added a 120GB SSD to the SATA Port #2 and I configured the partitioning tool to have the system on SSD and use the disk as background store.
1./ Installation
Procedure as usual since old time Mandriva. Custom partitioning, no problem. Several extra packets selected.
1a./ Installation asks for network connection. I define existing DHCP connection. Response:"Internet Connectivity Test Failed". Network was OK and correctly connected.
1b./ Parallel Printer (EPSON 760) connected and switched ON. Installation tool does not configure printer, does not even ask for printers.
1c./ After setting up Root password and users and GRUB installation and restart, system does not start. No boot sector found. Even if I change the SSD and Disk in the BIOS boot list. Finally I changed connectors, SSD into Sata1 and hard disk into Sata2 (and put BIOS back). Repeat full Mageia Installation from scratch. After this it was possible to boot Mageia2.
Seemingly the problem was that the SSD was configured as /dev/sdb and GRUB could not boot from sdb. But why it allowed this setup during the Installation? Why neither GRUB nor the Installation script recognizes impossible boot configuration?
2./ Configuration Using Mageia Control Center
After starting Mageia2 a big surprise. The Login Screen is empty. No users listed. It was, however, possible to login by typing user and password.
2a./ Setting up network OK. Still message: "Internet Connectivity Test Failed". But Network and Internet work well.
2b./ Printer setup. Setup tool works well, find parallel printer. Printer prints test page. But it is not accessible for users. Printer queue contains tasks, does not print. "Enabled" button off. As root one can enable, this state disappears after a few seconds. There was no way to use printer, except printing test pages as root.
2c./ I wanted to do a test with 3D driver. I changed driver to "fglrx"in Mageia Control Center. I pushed the "Test" button. Usually this applies the new setup for a few seconds, if it fails, you come back the old setup. Not in this case! Graphics card became unusable. Even failsafe booting only allows to use console, no graphics mode. "Startx" command fails. Alt-Ctrl-F1 does not work, neither.
After long experimenting I found on disk an old xorg.conf program that worked. At least I did not need to fully reinstall Mageia2 third time.
2d./ The big surprise came at the session end. It was not possible to switch off the PC!! There was no such button on the lower right corner of the screen, and the Menu/Leave offered only logout. The login screen did not offer reboot or shut down neither!
Login as root in a console window allowed to use both reboot and shutdown commands. This one correctly switches off the PC. But as user you have no way to switch off the machine, except the mains switch!
Changing in Mageia Control Center the MSEC "Allow system reboot and shutdown to local users" to YES does not change this behaviour.
3./ Setup
I wanted to setup some frequently used programs, mostly through Mageia Control Center.
3a./ I tested ssh (from console). I enabled ssh and in Mageia Control Center enabled file access. It did not work. Only when changing access rights as Root for /usr/bin/ssh it started to work. As I found, the Mageia Control Center access control part does not work at all.
I could not set up incoming ssh at all! Neither by changing Firewall in Control Center/Configure system security, nor MSEC/Security settings/Permissions. Interestingly, setting up ping acceptance was working. Thus I could ping my PC from another PC but no SSH access to this PC is possible. All attempts failed.
The "Share Internet Connections" window reports again:"No ethernet network adapter configured for LAN has been detected on your system". But the Internet was correctly working all the time!!!
3b./ I wanted to use Kjots. Does not work. It starts but does not allow to set up"New page" or "New book". These buttons do not respond at all. When pushing on "go to next page" Kjots definitely crashed. Tested several times.
3c./ KNotes starts, but is not possible to put its window to another Desktop.
3d./ XCam makes a stand picture but can not save it.
3e./ Sound Recorder does not work. Nothing happens when pushing "Record" button. When accessing "File/New" option it opens a new Sound Recorder window.
3f./ Firefox offers Mplayer as first to play streamed music from Internet. But it does not work. Firefox allows to select another tool but opens a File Manager window! Well, I could figure out, select /usr/bin/amarok here points at the correct source, but I am sure a Linux novice would expect here an Application Select tool, rather than a File Manager! But this is probably a Firefox flaw, not Mageia.
4./ Mageia Control Center becomes unusable
Yesterday (03/06/2012) the system downloaded upgrade files. Mostly Python related stuff, but also Drakxtools. After rebooting Mageia Control Center became unusable. After start it asks for root password but after getting this it fully disappears. Thus there is no way to configure Mageia or its software any more.
I was working with the Mageia installation during two weekends and several evenings. Now I have a system that does not operate many programs I regularly use, although these all were in the repository. After this last crash of Mageia Control Center my Linux became practically unusable. I want to search for another Linux.
It is a pity, with Mandriva 2010 almost all of these was working, except parallel printer. That was working last time with Mandriva 2008.
The only positive message: Skype and all of its services were working. This is my first Linux distribution that supported Skype out of the box. The sound services were working, too, the last Mandriva distributions (since the advent of Pulse Audio) had serious problems here.
I am very sorry to find Mageia2 unusable for my Desktop.
