Mageia forum

Planning to switch from Ubuntu. Mageia appears to be more focussed on Linux than Ubuntu.

But here are the questions:
What are the pros of switching? (Latest versions of, say, KDE, etc. appearing before they appear on Ubuntu, Better configuration tools, etc.)
What are the cons? (Availability of packages, deb vs. Mageia's package management tool, etc.)

Initially, I plan have a dual boot system running Kubuntu and Mageia on two separate bootable partitions and a home partition common to both. Is this workable? What could be the problems?

Sharing a /home partition using more than one distribution is a good idea.
Sharing a /home/user folder on that partition with different distributions is a bad idea and would cause all sorts of problems.

configuration tool is Magiea Control Center [ MCC ] for the GUI and urpmi for command line.
As a longtime user of the Mandrake fork of rpm distribution I find the MCC very easy to use for my system setup.
MCC looks after:

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software package management,
hardware configuration,
network and internet,
system,
network sharing,
local disks,
security,
boot.

Coming from Kubuntu will be a learning curve for you.

.deb vs .rpm very little difference at a user level apart from package names.
urpmi is very good at dependency management.
Be aware that not all programmes packaged for .deb have been ported to .rpm so if your favourite is not in the repository put in a software request

deshmukh wrote:Initially, I plan have a dual boot system running Kubuntu and Mageia

.
If you have an UEFI motherboard , be aware that support for this feature in Mageia is still experimental- but it is being addressed.
If you have a Grub 2 boot loader you may have some fun as sometimes the Grub 2 loader does not always find other O/Ses.

You could you try " Mageia " in a virtual box first

Pro's: For me I just find it a far nice user environment. The GUI tools for set up and configuration are second to none. I haven't had a real dependency issue for quite some time. The package and urpmi maintainers have done an awesome job.
Also a pro for me is never having to use a line like

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sudo apt-get package

Cons: Sudo isn't configured by default, you can install and configure sudo, but most mageia users prefer to log in as root if performing system changes. I personally install colorprompt, so my prompt is bright red when logged in as root so as to not do anything stupid. Possibly a con is that there is far more guides and tutorials on the web regarding ubuntu, but they honestly often make stuff look complicated when mageia can often do it all using GUI and a few mouse clicks.

As stated by benmc, MCC is a significant strength of Mageia. I encourage you to give Mageia a chance to impress you.

Ken-Bergen wrote:Sharing a /home partition using more than one distribution is a good idea.
Sharing a /home/user folder on that partition with different distributions is a bad idea and would cause all sorts of problems.

I did not get you here. What I plan to do is have two bootable partitions. One is Kubuntu, the other is Mageia. Both will load the same /home partition. There are, of course, /home/user1, /home/user2, etc.

I plan to have the same usernames and same privileges for both the Ubuntu and Mageia. Do you think that is not workable?

Hi Deshmukh and welcome to Mageia

If you set up your partitions thus: sda1 [kubuntu system or root ]/ sda2 [ swap ] / sda6 [kubuntu / Mageia home ]/ sda7 [ Mageia system or root ]
you can share both the swap and home partitions.
Any widgets that you have on one desktop will have to be installed on the other. there may be some incompatabilities

If you set up thus : sda1 [kubuntu system ]/ sda2 [ swap ] / sda6 [ Mageia system ] you cannot share the " home " files system of both .

Regards

benmc wrote:If you have an UEFI motherboard , be aware that support for this feature in Mageia is still experimental- but it is being addressed.
If you have a Grub 2 boot loader you may have some fun as sometimes the Grub 2 loader does not always find other O/Ses.

I run an ASUS laptop with AMD processor. I have been able to multi-boot on the same computer with Kubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome without any problems.

Also, if Grub 2 bootloader is not adequate, does Mageia have an alternate boot loader that will be able to handle Mageia and Kubuntu?

benmc wrote:If you set up your partitions thus: sda1 [kubuntu system or root ]/ sda2 [ swap ] / sda6 [kubuntu / Mageia home ]/ sda7 [ Mageia system or root ]
you can share both the swap and home partitions.
Any widgets that you have on one desktop will have to be installed on the other. there may be some incompatabilities

If you set up thus : sda1 [kubuntu system ]/ sda2 [ swap ] / sda6 [ Mageia system ] you cannot share the " home " files system of both .

Just to confirm, the numbers, per se, are not important but the order is. Correct? So, it could be 1 - Kubuntu, 3 - Swap, 5 - /home and 9 - Mageia.

And in this confugiration, the users will see all their files, etc. the same way whether they boot in Kubuntu or in Mageia, provided both the systems have same programs/ widgerts, etc. installed. Correct?

xboxboy wrote:Also a pro for me is never having to use a line like

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sudo apt-get package

Did not get you here. Do you mean there is no need to use command-line?

xboxboy wrote:Cons: Sudo isn't configured by default, you can install and configure sudo, but most mageia users prefer to log in as root if performing system changes. I personally install colorprompt, so my prompt is bright red when logged in as root so as to not do anything stupid.

Is not running as a root a security risk? I remember reading something like that. It recommended a user with admin previleges --- not a root user. In fact, on Kubuntu, there is no 'root' user.

deshmukh wrote:Just to confirm, the numbers, per se, are not important but the order is. Correct? So, it could be 1 - Kubuntu, 3 - Swap, 5 - /home and 9 - Mageia

the order is not important, the important thing is the separate /home partition.
Any desktop widgets may cause a problem as they use a different package [ .deb or .rpm ]

You will need to check which boot loader is being used by your existing Kubuntu,[ I think it is Grub2 ] and use the same one when setting up the Mageia system configuration page- this is the last page of the installer, as Mageia default is grub legacy.

Mageia uses 2 level of management. user and root.
Root is for system changes and software management is considered a system change by Mageia.
User changes like wallpaper preference, mouse pointer, text preferences etc. do not need admin [ root ] level access and as such do not normally need a root level password.
If a user attempts a change that requires root level access Mageia will request it.
E.g. you have down-loaded a piece of software that is not in the repository - Google earth is an example. you dont need root level access to download it but to install it you would need to give the root password.

You are welcome to use the command line, however there are 2 levels - user and root.
you can start any program from command line eg - type dolphin and the file manager will start.
type sudo apt-get [ package-name ],[ the command line installer from ubuntu] and it will not run, as it is not enabled by default.

if you want to install a package via command line in Mageia you first must become root.
the belief is, is you are prepared to run as a root user , you understand the risk and are prepared for them.

deshmukh wrote:In fact, on Kubuntu, there is no 'root' user.

That's not correct - in fact, the root user is just not assigned any password, last time I checked.

Kubuntu use only sudo root is disabled in kubuntu and ubuntu.
Here is more info about sudo in ubuntu.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

deshmukh wrote:I did not get you here. What I plan to do is have two bootable partitions. One is Kubuntu, the other is Mageia. Both will load the same /home partition. There are, of course, /home/user1, /home/user2, etc.

I plan to have the same usernames and same privileges for both the Ubuntu and Mageia. Do you think that is not workable?

If you're going to share a /home/user folder you should/must use the same "User ID" number.
As Ubuntu starts "User ID" numbers at 1,000 and Mageia starts at 500 you'll have to manually assign the numbers in Mageia to mach Ubuntu.

Then there's User and Desktop settings.
Changes made in one operating system to these setting will have unpredictable results on the other operating system.

Your best bet would be to make a shared folder like /home/share and use separate identities for your users.

ozky wrote:Kubuntu use only sudo root is disabled in kubuntu and ubuntu.

Just as I've mentioned, assigning no password basically has the same effect as locking the account.