Fresh install of Mageia 3 and repositories errors

[sylvanillo]

A first feedback on the Mageia install vs 3.

My little Sony latop has been running Mandriva 2010.2 for 3 years+ - the day I received it I removed the Vista system provided and didn't even bother making the CDs! I work in IT, have a Dev background and have been Linux at work for 15 years, but this laptop was for home use and therefore Mandriva was an end user system.
Well, really satisfied with this distrib (OS + support) apart from 2 points:
- graphic wasn't perfect during the first 2 months, due to the newest Nvidia card; I therefore became a beta tester for Nvidia and was able to make the first dev driver work on my system. Solved!
- the wifi was working from day 1, but has always been slow. This was due to a kernel bug in vs 2.6 which was fixed from 2.6.39, however I failed the kernel update for any reason; Not solved!

Mandriva being dead, Mageia has been the natural move.

The Live DVD 64 loaded correctly and I could check that both the Nvidia and network drivers are ok. Great!

I then did the install from the downloadable DVD 64. After the first install steps, the install fails with package dependencies (gcc*). I find it incredible that an OS install can fail i) when choosing its own packages and ii) on a system where the OS has proven to work!
I then tried the 32 and it gave the same problem.

So I loaded the Live distrib again and tried the install from there. I have to say that it is pretty impressive, all in a small window works smoothly and there wasn't any dependencies problem.

For the moment, startup and shutdown are done in a few seconds and the network is extremely fast.

I suppose that I'll have to do a system update though, it would be the logical way in modern distribs, let's see if I encounter the same package install problems.

[wintpe]

I installed from the 64 bit DVD and had no such problems.

the mga 3 straight from DVD experience is in my opinion better that the MGA 2 which was fraught with issues about drivers
due to there being no ability to install propriety until the install was complete.

MGA 3 solved this with the clickable option to use propriety add ons during the install ie non free.

and as a result was the best mageia install experience ive ever seen.

I have not yet switched to it on my main PC for my own reasons, but that does not detract from how good the installer is.

Therefore there has to be a reason for your experience to be so different, and you are just assuming this is the fault of mageia.

Its more likely the fault lies with something unique to your situation.

this could be

The burned image is at fault, due to either dodgy media or bad download

it would be a good idea to use the live install to run md5sum on the full 64 bit dvd image and ensure its downloaded correctly.



regards peter

[sylvanillo]

Hi Peter,

You basically defend Mageia but I have a more objective opinion - in fact it's just a feedback and I hope it is considered in further releases. BTW, the laptop specs are there.

and as a result was the best mageia install experience ive ever seen.

I have not yet switched to it on my main PC for my own reasons, but that does not detract from how good the installer is.

The installer is indeed simple but I had an issue which shouldn't happen, I think the last time I saw that was with a RedHat 5... that's many, many years ago.
The "in-live" installer was on the contrary quite good as I said.

Therefore there has to be a reason for your experience to be so different, and you are just assuming this is the fault of mageia.
Its more likely the fault lies with something unique to your situation.

During an install, an installer always deals with a specific situation. It is designed to handle as many situations as possible.
Keeping in mind that it's a 3 years old Sony laptop widely sold, it also shouldn't be such a strange being in the Mageia's world.
So, of course it is a defect in the Mageia's installer.

The burned image is at fault, due to either dodgy media or bad download
it would be a good idea to use the live install to run md5sum on the full 64 bit dvd image and ensure its downloaded correctly.

You raise a good suggestion. But, because I was surprised by what I saw, I downloaded the Live DVD a second time, and from another laptop in order to burn differently (because I had produced the Live DVD from that other computer...), I did a MD5 check just in case, took a new DVD, formatted it and rewrote it. I can't imagine a better second chance!!

Anyway, I was saying, I think it's likely I need to update the system to get the same software than what comes with the Full DVD so I'll see if I see a similar problem, and would if so will report it.