Mageia forum

I was pleasantly surprised by the installation process. However, due to some sillies it still scores 6/10:

Good points: (1) it is reasonably quick (2) It has a reasonable first attempt at a sensible user registration utility

Now for the sillies:
(1) Having determined the locality, it fails to make use of the information:
a) it fails to register/configure a sensible default software source URL. (In fact, it fails to configure any.
When prodded and telling it that it can use the internet, it seems to default to Czechoslovakia! How dumb
is that?)
b) when it attempts to establish a network connection, it assummes that it is conforming to US regulations!
To make it work properly, one has to scrub around to find to find a menu to correct this. To get an internet
connection working properly, I had to set up IP addresses manually!

(2) Why does the software manager ask for permission to use the internet? It can find out for itself using 'ifconfig'!

(3) The user registration utility needs to realise that the Linux convention wrt group numbers is just a convention. Long
before Linux was even thought of there were other *nixes with different conventions: eg Solaris lay group numbers
started at 200 (not 1000)! For over 25 years, I have had an uid 2100 and a guid of 221. I know implemeters assume
most installers are newbies escaping from Windoze; that is no excuse to make life difficult for upgraders/sidegraders!
There is no convention, as far as I am aware, to have a user's group name the same as his/her user name. Just a few
simple adjustments can make this utility really friendly rather than a half hearted effort.

(4) The Package manager (drak..rpm) utility is verging on the poisonous; it makes dear old 'synaptic' appear a paragon of virtue.
Searching for packages (e.g. LaTeX) is a laugh -- to load LaTeX (texlive) one has to load 'kile'! Searching for 'latex' or 'texlive'
does not result in anything useful. I eventually found 'evolution' and installed it -- and that was by luck! Why wasn't it installed
by default?

(5) Several essential packages (eg /usr/share/dict/words) seem to be missing altogether.

I could go on listing niggles ad nausiam. I am not moaning for the sake of it; I am an ardent supporter of the Linux community.
I have been using various flavours of Unix and Linux professionally since 1983. If you are not going to put off escapees from the
Wi***ws community, Mageia must sharpen up its act and remove these sillies.

John Hunter

Thanks for your contribution.
One thing that is disturbing for me, is your remark about Wi***ws.
In the eye of respect for other communities, please change/remove.

How? Delete "concentration camp" Insert "community"

Thanks for your understanding and correction.

If you'd like some answers or remarks on the points you put up, would you mind if I split your feedback into a separate thread?
I'd prefer not to hijack the thread of the OP for this.

By all means, but please let me know where.

Seperate your questions through the appropriate sub-forums of Basic-support (like networking, sound, video, whatever...)
More specialized questions can be dumped into the Advanced-sub.

At first, thanks for the extensive in-depth feedback and criticism, greatly appreciated. I'll try to go through your points:

jmdh01 wrote:Now for the sillies:
(1) Having determined the locality, it fails to make use of the information:

FWIW, you select language and keyboard layout, which may or may not map with your current geographic location - e.g. there are a lot of european users that prefer english keyboard layout, use their local timezone, but they may not be located in europe at all - hence using this for software repo configuration may not be suitable. The repo configuration is separate and uses basic geolocation at the time you configure the repos.
Latitude and longitude are contained in the mirrors API list (example for mga5 i586: http://mirrors.mageia.org/api/mageia.5.i586.list) for the mirrors.
Although I prefer to choose a specific mirror instead of the automatism, and most other users do too, some also use the mirrors map or http://mirrors.mageia.org/status as basis.
Sadly so far we didn't manage to switch our mirror infrastructure including this geolocation stuff to MirrorBrain.

jmdh01 wrote: a) it fails to register/configure a sensible default software source URL. (In fact, it fails to configure any.
When prodded and telling it that it can use the internet, it seems to default to Czechoslovakia! How dumb
is that?)

Do you mean during installation or after installation?
If that mirror answered fastest at the time it was queried and is not so distant that far away from your actual location, that's probably the cause.

jmdh01 wrote: b) when it attempts to establish a network connection, it assummes that it is conforming to US regulations!
To make it work properly, one has to scrub around to find to find a menu to correct this. To get an internet
connection working properly, I had to set up IP addresses manually!

Do you mean wireless connection, or what do you mean in particular with "conforming to US regulations" ?
Apart from that, usual DHCP connection to a router should be hassle-free and not require manual intervention.

jmdh01 wrote:(2) Why does the software manager ask for permission to use the internet? It can find out for itself using 'ifconfig'!

You mean the software repo mager, when adding new repos? http://doc.mageia.org/mcc/5/en/content/ ... media.html
In general, this is because not all users are aware that the packages will be installed from the internet, which may consume quite some traffic,
if you are on limited traffic rates - not because the software manager cannot determine if there's an internet connection.

jmdh01 wrote:(3) The user registration utility needs to realise that the Linux convention wrt group numbers is just a convention. Long
before Linux was even thought of there were other *nixes with different conventions: eg Solaris lay group numbers
started at 200 (not 1000)! For over 25 years, I have had an uid 2100 and a guid of 221. I know implemeters assume
most installers are newbies escaping from Windoze; that is no excuse to make life difficult for upgraders/sidegraders!
There is no convention, as far as I am aware, to have a user's group name the same as his/her user name. Just a few
simple adjustments can make this utility really friendly rather than a half hearted effort.

It is not intended to make life difficult, you are free to choose a UID and GID to your liking in the advanced section, see http://doc.mageia.org/installer/5/en/co ... erAdvanced (at the very bottom)
The default for Mageia is to create a private group for each user with uid=gid (which is a common case for popular desktop distributions) with uids starting at 1000 since Mageia 5.
This is dependent on USERGROUPS_ENAB=yes in /etc/login.defs and useradd -U option - which is the default also e.g. on RHEL and
I believe that's also the upstream default, coming from shadow-utils: http://pkg-shadow.alioth.debian.org/

The major part of casual users should have no problem with such private groups, and those that know what they need can easily adjust.

jmdh01 wrote:(4) The Package manager (drak..rpm) utility is verging on the poisonous; it makes dear old 'synaptic' appear a paragon of virtue.
Searching for packages (e.g. LaTeX) is a laugh -- to load LaTeX (texlive) one has to load 'kile'! Searching for 'latex' or 'texlive'
does not result in anything useful. I eventually found 'evolution' and installed it -- and that was by luck! Why wasn't it installed
by default?

You should follow the advice and select "All" as filter instead of the default to show only packages with a GUI.

Yes, I hate that default setting too and it's usually the first advice for any novice. Problem is to get the developer convinced that
hiding major part of the packages is not what users need.

But then, I don't use rpmdrake at all, as urpmi is much quicker, and urpmf/urpmq for queries are some of the best package management tools.
Please check our software management MAQeia for more information on software and package management.

jmdh01 wrote:(5) Several essential packages (eg /usr/share/dict/words) seem to be missing altogether.

Hmm, what else is missing? And what media did you use to install Mageia?
words is installed here and came with the initial installation (installation from free dvd x86_64 with KDE).
To easily query which package in the repos contains a file (or use a regex to search instead of a full path/filename) use urpmf

Code: Select all

┌─[doktor5000@Mageia5]─[22:36:45]─[~]
└──╼ urpmf /usr/share/dict/words
words:/usr/share/dict/words
words:/usr/share/dict/words

Thank you for your detailed response. I seem to remember selecting 'London' for the time zone; that should have been a very good clue as to my exact locality (51.7N 1.7W). I used the 1.7GB Mageia 5 live image burnt onto an USB flash drive to perform the install. Immediately after the first reboot and the user set up dialogue, it requested a software update. This appeared to take an inordinate time so I investigated what it was trying to do. I then went to the Mageia Control Centre and was presented with a meaningless list of 70-odd Mirror lists (with absolutely no explanation as to their significance). The <b>Option</b> menu failed to provide any useful options. In desperation I tried the (Illogical) option of using the <b>File</b> menu to select a particular mirror! I selected a uk mirror whereupon things started to happen. How is an innocent newby expected to cope with that? As for package management, the defaults should be straight forward and not configured like Sherlock Holmes mystery.
Other missing items include some icons for 'xfe' and 'xfv'. No doubt, I shall come across more.