Mageia forum

I wanna install Mageia in my laptop to replace *ubuntu, but there is something that makes me worry.

I don't have problem in using old software, actually I do prefer the stability of *fixed-release* distros. However, there are softwares that I like having the latest stable versions, they are Firefox and LibreOffice. I am making this question because acording to Mageia App Db and RPM Find, it seems that Firefox still is in the version 68 (even *ubuntu 18.04 has updated it to version 73...) and LibreOffice still is in the version 6.2.8. Does Mageia has some kind of service like PPA in the sense that only one software (two softwares in this case) has a special repository while others are updated accordingly the official stable repositories? I only want update these two programs, I am fine with the versions of the other programs.

Hello !

No, there is no such PPA services on Mageia.
When MgaX is ship with version Y of libre office, all along the mgaX live, we will stick on that version. We will upgrade the subversion (like from 6.2.8 to 6.2.9) but we stick on version 6.
It is always possible to install concurently two versions of LO, for example, installing the RPM from libreoffice : https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
but there won't be any mecanism to update it automatically. But there are no new version each 4 mornings
Same for firefox.

I see that the time between the releases of Mageia is more or less one year. Is it common for users of Firefox having problems with addons in this old version of Firefox? Will I be fine with Firefox 68?

I can not talk for all users, but I never met any difficulties with Firefox addons the last 5 years.

Thank you very much for your answers.

Well, there are backports in certain cases, where a package maintainer decides to offer a later version. You can find a quick list also at MADB:
https://madb.mageia.org/rpm/list/applic ... /backports and some possible future backport candidates: https://madb.mageia.org/rpm/list/applic ... ts_testing

Apart from that, for firefox you can easily grab a tarball from Mozilla directly, extract it to your home folder and you'll have the latest version, and you'll also get automatic updates directly from Mozilla.
For why we still have 68.x that is because it was decided that we go with the ESR version, and 68.x is currently the latest ESR version.

If you need newer versions for specific programs, you can use e.g. FlatPak or AppImage - there are several forum threads about this, if you need more information.

F.Y.I.: Firefox 68 in Mageia 7.1 is an E(xtended)S(upport)R(elease) version. We are currently on: 68.5.0esr, so there are no security issues if you think that might be an issue (the fixes are all included).