Brainstorming about how to get more active contributors

[emel_punk]

Reading about the comments I would enumerate:
* Elaborate a better maintainer reluctant process
* Get rid of old apps.

my suggestions are:

* Stop pushing releases annually and become a LTS distro.
* Develop or get a new MCC tool. This was the main thing mandrake was known for, and still to this day some distribution still doesn't focus on, well maybe *Suse.
* Maintain an identity. As a distribution, it is not just gather packages and put a name, it's more of a target, bigs distros like RHEL, SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu they have done this.
* Get toward enterprise path. This is what mandriva was doing and has been the path big distros have token. There are enough distros out there for nerds.

[morgano]

Btw, Cockpit, which is also available for Mageia, is the far better alternative. It is actively developed, secure, faster and much more versatile as the old MCC and YaST. And it has most of the needed functions of YaST and MCC. There are coming additional modules nearly daily.

That sounds interesting
Please could you write a short wiki page on how to start using it on Mageia?

[irondave]

YaST is barely maintained and many of the ~250 modules broken. The same applies for MCC.

Nowadays such "universal" tools are kind of useless. Many tasks can be done faster, better and more secure by using modern builtin tools. User management? Can be done from the DE. Printer setup? Driverless printing nowadays and printer management of the DE. Network management? Networkmanager. Firewall? Can be done better from the terminal than from MCC. And so on...

Btw, Cockpit, which is also available for Mageia, is the far better alternative. It is actively developed, secure, faster and much more versatile as the old MCC and YaST. And it has most of the needed functions of YaST and MCC. There are coming additional modules nearly daily.
- network management
- firewall mangement
- service management
- VM mangement
- partitioner
- Software management (repositories and updates)
- hardware inspection
- performance tab
- systmemctl (logs)
- user management
- manage remote machines
- ...

And no, there is not a lot of discontent among the users of openSUSE regarding Cockpit and Myrlyn. It's always the same handfull of ppl which cry the loudest, but lack basic understanding of developement, security and computer management at all. And no, there is no need to keep a rotten dead and bugged module like for ISDN modems alive for this one single person, when the rest of the users already arived in the present and now. And this few loud ppl are the worst. In most cases they never contributed anything to the opensource world, but only demand and cry about actual progress. And i don't mean contributing as in spending money, as this is in most cases not even needed. I mean editing a wiki, reporting a bug, testing a package, branching a package, helping users in forum and so on. "Stuck in the past" is the best description for such ppl....

OFC the majority of openSUSE users are ok with those changes and only the loud minority is speaking its mind. What I was trying to say is that Mageia is basically unheard of.
I'm the first to admit that tools like Yast or MCC are basically relics of the past and aren't very useful anymore.

There needs to be an ISO availible that has a kernel released this side of the 2020s

This lacks any basis. The initial Kernel which Mageia 9 was shipped with, was kernel-6.4 which was released in June 2023. When you install Mageia 9 today with the two years old installer, your system will have the latest actual 6.6.x longterm kernel which was released Aug 2025. This is done automatically at the end of the installation. See installer documentation https://doc.mageia.org/installer/9/en/content/installUpdates.html.

This is only relevant when performing the installation while you're connected to the internet. If you're offline this can't be done.
In any case, I believe providing an updated ISO image wouldn't be a bad idea.

Reading about the comments I would enumerate:
* Elaborate a better maintainer reluctant process
* Get rid of old apps.

my suggestions are:

* Stop pushing releases annually and become a LTS distro.
* Develop or get a new MCC tool. This was the main thing mandrake was known for, and still to this day some distribution still doesn't focus on, well maybe *Suse.
* Maintain an identity. As a distribution, it is not just gather packages and put a name, it's more of a target, bigs distros like RHEL, SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu they have done this.
* Get toward enterprise path. This is what mandriva was doing and has been the path big distros have token. There are enough distros out there for nerds.

IMHO: rather than an LTS release model, I would lean more toward an "immutable distro" model. System updates could be handled using systemd-sysupdate while flatpak could be used for managing desktop applications. Obviously, for servers we should ditch urpmi (with all my sadness) and go with dnf5.
Also developing a new tool like MCC would be a significant undertaking for the development team, and given current trends, its usefulness might be quite limited. I would be more inclined to explore solutions like Cockpit instead.

In today’s fragmented landscape, between unstable rolling distros and closed corporate solutions, Mageia should aim to position itself as a solid, modern, and community-driven alternative.
These are the key points we should focus on to give Mageia an identity:
- stability first, Mageia adopts a regular and cautious release cycle, with well-tested updates
- independent community, Mageia is developed by the community, with no corporate backing (open code, transparent decisions)
- an european alternative GDPR-friendly, privacy-respecting, with strong european cultural roots
- selective modernity, modern technologies only where they bring real benefits

[thescarletpimpernel]

Greetings all,

I would suggest the practical way to get active contributors is two-fold:

01 increase the number of users
02 increase forum participation to demonstrate Mageia has an active community

Right now there appears to be an opportunity to expand the user base because of the decline of distros that are willing to support 32 bit.

In the past couple of years, Lubuntu stopped making a 32 bit version. LXLE recently ceased to exist. And now with Debian ceasing to create a 32 bit version you might expect to see a number of venerable distros move away from 32 bit such as Bodhi and LMDE.

The pool for 32 bit is rapidly dwindling. Slackware based distros, such as Porteus, Slackel, and Salix are positioned well as is Void but so far no offering seems to have updated their website with tags to drive 32 bit traffic. There still is a lot of 32 bit out there, especially outside the U.S. and EU.

Here are some actual numbers for my single processor 32 bit T43 with 1.5 GB RAM running Mageia is Live mode:

247 MB RAM with wifi connected.
625 MB RAM with firefox up.
806 MB RAM watching a youtube video via firefox.

Those are impressive numbers in a intuitive distro.

In regard to forum participation, having a warm and nurturing tone is seldom a negative. One way to generate participation is by selecting a discrete(aka small) piece of existing documentation and asking for a review.

Wishing the Mageia crew success, happiness,and fulfillment.

TheScarletPimpernel

[doktor5000]

Right now there appears to be an opportunity to expand the user base because of the decline of distros that are willing to support 32 bit.

That's a pretty niche case, and most distros abandon this for a reason. There are more and more upstream projects which fail to build in absence of specific SSE extensions (mostly SSE2 which is often required for OpenGL and in some core upstream projects like e.g. Qt)
We had this case several times already where those programs simply fail to run on i586 without more or less heavy workarounds. I know because I tried to help fix some of those, e.g. for sddm, qt-creator and qtbase
And if upstream is not willing to help fix something like that, we cannot support something like that on our own.

[thealio]

Hi everybody

I'm a brand new Mageia user. The quality of the project is really high level, congratulations !

BTW , I wanna share my opinions about how to get more active contributions and improve Mageia:

- Mageia have to distinguish among the masses, it have not to be the standard distro. Made the distro universal for every kind of user is the main point IMHO.
A distro that everyone would love to use

- A semi-rolling branch , that can be used for daily usage surely would be a big point, maybe the most relevant. Opensuse gained lot of popularity since Tumbleweed version adoption , I also tried Slowroll and it's a good idea. Mageia shoud have a rolling branch that is not so unstable, and can be used without major issues.

- The part of the community requiring altrenatives to standard bloats, common on the linux echosem , is increasing. Also the part requiring to explicit be "not political" and "software centric"

- Zillions of distro uses systemd, wich is hated by many because of its bloat and it's not unix philosophy
I propose to replace systemd with another init. On artix I use dinit and S6, whic are really good , I also use runit on Devuan and Void, it seeems solid. I've never used openrc, but it's well supported for sure .

- GNOME deskop has become weird, weird , weird, heavy and systemd centric, adopt a no-systemd init and drop GNOME is for me a good choice. Replacing the GNOME edition with the Mate edition it would be beneficial , and it would means less workload and headaches for the devs .

- Adding other desktop and tiling winows managers (xmonad , qtile , leftwm , dk) , possibly instead of the big fat weird GNOME
Also, web browser choices are very important nowadays

- I'm personally a big supporter of the xlibre xserver , I use it on Artix , Arch , Debian and Devuan . Those distros have very good packages avaiable (Artix on the repos , the otre via external repos. Openmandriva have a bad xlibre packaging, cause of that, xlibre does not work well on openmandriva .
Artix and Arch external repos are the best for xlibre , the following is the way to go : https://x11libre.net/repo/arch_based/x86_64/
Of course, xlibre should be avaiable, not necessary be the default

- The documentation of Mageia is good. I remember that Manjaro used to make avaiable pdf files documentation about usage of software tools and package manager directli on $HOME folder.
This is a very good idea.

- The Mageia netinstall is good enough, very good job , congratulations . However, Arcolinux's arconet and EndeavourOs calamares implementations were super.
I propose to make only the mani KDE flagship to a focused DE desktop, and for the rest of the dektops use a netinstall
I liked the Calamares netinstallers, but the best netilstaller I've ever tried were the TUI installers of Devuan and Void

- Maybe adding the current user to the sudoers by default will avoid headeaches for the average user

- Maybe a differen kernel management (based on linux-main , linux-lits-current , linux-lts-old and linux-zen) would be a good idea

- For the rest, let's continue on this path, what I'm seeing about Mageia it's a general good quality work. The specific Mageia applications are very good , Mageia is a quality project

[morgano]

Many thanks for your input, thealio
And welcome to Mageia!
If you want you can introduce yourself at https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?t=15
You are much welcome to contribute

[caffilhobr]

I found this questioning very interesting, Marja. I'm speaking here from Brazil, and I really like Mageia. Today, for example, we no longer have a forum in Portuguese, which is a shame. I believe that to strengthen our community and attract new contributors, some strategies could be adopted:

- Conduct social media campaigns with short, visual posts that show how easy it is to start contributing, including direct links to onboarding areas. These are the main communication networks with young audiences.
- Produce short testimonial videos where contributors share what motivated them to join the project and what they learned from the experience.
- Establish partnerships with universities, presenting Mageia as an opportunity for extension projects or internships for information technology students. When I was in the lab, we had Debian, Fedora, but not Mageia.

To reactivate "hibernating" contributors who are inactive, which I think is my case, consider:

- Send a personalized newsletter with monthly updates and specific calls directed at those who have contributed previously.
- Promote public recognition by highlighting former contributors in posts or thank you pages, valuing their contributions.
- Organize online reconnection events, informal meetings to chat, share ideas, and reinforce the value of the Mageia community.
- Adopt the practice of reverse mentorship, inviting former contributors to guide new members without requiring direct technical involvement.

These are my contributions.

[zeebra]

Guys. Mageia is a great distro!

Ofcourse, like with many things, "passion" is highest in the beginning, and if there is alot of positive response and activity. Mageia for a long time was one of the most popular distroes, but it's not exactly the case now. However, the good qualities of Mageia has not changed. And please, don't give up! I don't know alot about how contributions to Mageia, and who the core contributors were and/or still are...

A few things about Mageia that is central to Mageia, in my opinion:
- It's a French distro
- It just works
- Reliable releases
- "Bleeding edge"
- Many packages available/good package manager
- Good management tools

So, I see some people talking about flatpaks and what not.. But what you are talking about is removing one of the core strengths of Mageia. I think, instead it is important to focus on the core ideas of Mageia. So, for example.
- Mageia is French. I think it is a good idea to focus on looking for interested French contributors. Perhaps especially for core contributors. I think part of this is also to make sure the localized French version of Mageia is "the best" French localization around. There are many talented French people who could contribute.
- Mageia still just works, so, it's important to keep it this way
- I think one of the things that can increase the popularity of Mageia is more frequent releases.. Ofcourse, if things are starting to slide a little, one of the things that can happen is ofcourse that the releases become less frequent, and so less reliable. If people have some idea in their head about when the next release of Mageia is going to be, it feels more reliable, so I think it's important to keep a mostly regular schedule, and more frequent than it currently is.. Even if there are less changes, having the same frequency still makes it feel more reliable. Even if the distro becomes less "bleeding edge" it is still better to be reliable. But it's even better if the distro is "bleeding edge".. But how can this be possible if there are less contributors? Well, I think it's then about being more selective about what is bleeding edge" and what is not. Do all packages have to be the newest ones? Not really, but the most impactful ones should ideally be.. I just recently re-installed Mageia because I wanted to test out Plasma6 and Wine 10 easily, just to find out these packages are not available.
- One of the good things about Mageia has always been the package manager and a huge selection of packages! Well, native packages and things like Guix and flatpak and such things are not the same thing. Sure, it's possible to just ship all of those things and drop Mageia packages entirely, but then it's not really Mageia anymore.
- Ok, one little negative thing in the end. When Mageia first started out, it had brought with it incredible management tools. They were not perfect, and some of the things in them did not really work, or were not fully reliable. Personally, I was hoping back then that over time Mageia would improve on these tools and perhaps add new functions to them. This sadly did not materialize. I know, it's a bit of a hard topic, and a complicated thing, but it is also one of those things that really could/can set Mageia apart from other distros.

Anyways, don't get disheartened! Mageia is a good distro, a cool distro and a stable distro. Many things in life goes up and down, but I think it is important to try to not get discouraged from it. Mageia has a good foundation, good people and good reach to be able to make things change and be really positive. Look, right now I'm using Slackware, and it's just 1 guy doing most of the work, and it's great! So, everything is possible!

[zeebra]

- an european alternative GDPR-friendly, privacy-respecting, with strong european cultural roots

This I think is a great point, very underestimated.

[Goro_Daimon]

I'm back, guys. I know you didn't miss me at all, hahahaha!

I wish I had some free time and knew advanced programming so I could help you out. I've contributed in the past with translations in Wikipédia, EasyRPG, Paintown, but you know how it is—living in a third-world country is a real pain.

And what saddens me most, besides not having the chance to help, is that my country has imposed restrictions on many GNU/Linux distros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3erhbwqIAM

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179

[dreamer88]

my suggestions are:

* Stop pushing releases annually and become a LTS distro.

I agree with that or rather I see two paths, either rolling like Arch and it's derivates, or LTS (at least 5 years) like Debian/Devuan stable, Ubuntu LTS and LinuxMint.

That's what I see most people want these days, either always up-to-date or at least 5 years of stability.

The roughly 2 years that Mageia currently has between releases attract neither people who always want the latest SW versions nor people who seek stability.

I also was first a Mandrake user in the early 2000s then a Mandriva user until the end and then initially a Mageia User. I even was a packager in the Mageia 1 days but I left for Centos because at the time I preferred a stable LTS distro.

Since I can't stand anymore the absolute cancer that Systemd has become (it has transformed Linux from a Unix-like to a Windows-like system), now I mostly use Devuan for stability and PCLinuxOS for systems that need up-to-date software (these two distros are both systemd free).

Unfortunately Mageia right now does not have a unique selling point, it's just a "me too" distro mostly following Fedora.

If Mageia was to ditch Systemd and become a 5 year LTS distro that would get me very interested and I would apply to package for Mageia again. It would allow me to switch from Devuan to Mageia for systems where I need a LTS distro. Devuan is great but the deb packaging format is horrible, I much prefer RPM.

But as it currently stands I only use Mageia for nostalgic reasons on some non important systems (a HTPC and a Tablet).

I hope I haven't offended anyone with this post, please take it as a personal opinion that's meant as a constructive criticism.


PS: like thealio wrote, consider ditching Gnome, that will free up packager time as Gnome is very unpopular anyway, it's a corporate Desktop pushed by corporate IBM/Redhat devs that are completely out of touch with what most private users are interested in

[Goro_Daimon]

I agree because I love LTS distros like Debian, Devuan, Ubuntu and Mint LTS.

[irondave]

I have nothing against LTS distros but at least I would give the option to update packages to the latest possible version for those who want a more up-to-date system. It would be enough to populate the backports repo with packages present in cauldron for certain groups of packages such as desktop environments and commonly used apps.

[tjdean01]

Hello. I'm new here but am certainly no stranger to forums...and have the carpel tunnel syndrome to prove it! So, this might not be useful info, but something that has made me personally decided to stick around or leave forums.

Trolls are NOT the problem. The problem is when someone comes with a question or comment and the "old hand" "credentialed" members jump down his throat and make him feel stupid. This is what happens on Reddit. Sometimes I have a stupid question but Reddit is an elitist group of..."the world's best posters!"??? or something of the sort. No fun posing there because you could ask anything and get criticized. I doubt that's happening here as much but if it is those doing it are definitely preventing new users from sticking around.

[doktor5000]

The problem is when someone comes with a question or comment and the "old hand" "credentialed" members jump down his throat and make him feel stupid. This is what happens on Reddit. Sometimes I have a stupid question but Reddit is an elitist group of..."the world's best posters!"??? or something of the sort. No fun posing there because you could ask anything and get criticized.

Hi there and welcome to Mageia

Feel free to call out something like you mentioned, as that is not expected at all, and that would also violate our code of conduct.
Have a look at https://www.mageia.org/about/code-of-conduct/
(there are also some rules for the forum but those are pretty old and most people don't read them, but they're still valid)

And yeah, many subreddits are really a cesspool and can be pretty elitist or toxic, but I hope that's not the only standard you compare us against.

[DiBosco]

As someone who writes software for a living (albeit, mostly embedded, but is getting more and more Qt/C++ experience) and is therefore technical, I might be ideal to do some work for Mageia.

A couple of times years back I asked about a seminar/one-to-one on keeping RPMs going, was pointed to a web page or pages that made RPM upkeep seem incredibly arcane, and with a real lack of interest in teaching it, I was put off. I would love to be able to be maintainer for, say, kicad, which I use and think is a great app. However, I would need some proper hand holding to get me there. Once I've learnt I would be happy to just go with it.

The point being, is that the reception to this sort of offer when I've done it before is lukewarm and there is a real lack of someone to take you under their wing.

BTW, what is wrong with MCC? Seems absolutely brilliant to me, light years away from anything other distros have to offer. This is a genuine question, not trying to be funny.

Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia, I've been here since 2000 has always seemed by far the easiest distro to use. I am always saddened it doesn't get more users. These days it's ultra-reliable and I rarely have to even come to the forum to look for issues I might have.

[doktor5000]

A couple of times years back I asked about a seminar/one-to-one on keeping RPMs going, was pointed to a web page or pages that made RPM upkeep seem incredibly arcane, and with a real lack of interest in teaching it, I was put off. I would love to be able to be maintainer for, say, kicad, which I use and think is a great app. However, I would need some proper hand holding to get me there. Once I've learnt I would be happy to just go with it.

The point being, is that the reception to this sort of offer when I've done it before is lukewarm and there is a real lack of someone to take you under their wing.

Hi there,
I could help with that, although this is probably the wrong thread for this. If you want, maybe create a separate thread in the packaging subforum,
and try to describe what you already understood or what you don't understand or is missing or confusing from your point of view, that might also help others.
A good entry point would be https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Packagers_Howto_start and the linked tutorial.

packaging is not arcane wizardry, the issue is more that people directly want to be a packager, but they are missing or skipping quite a few pieces of the required basics, and want to learn all in one go, which is mostly not a good idea.
First you should have a decent understanding on basic linux administration, how permissions work, what FHS is and that sort of stuff. Then you should know or learn how to compile existing software yourself, and maybe get familiar with different build systems.
Then you can learn how to package that software into an RPM package. And once you got that, you can learn how to build that on a central buildsystem, and not locally on your own box.

Although I might add a famous quote regarding the arcane part: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

[irondave]

IMHO we can automate package creation to a great extent. As I've already written in this topic, other distros have created fully automated packaging systems that monitor the various source code release channels and update packages without much human intervention.