Y'all,
Installed MGA3RC today to evaluate. More detailed report to follow, but first this bug stood out as worth paying attention to:
I attempted to edit the KDE menu as a user. I added an entry. Saving was unsuccessful. I received this error: "could not write to /home/myusername/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu" The ~/.config/menus directory is owned by root. Further, there is no applications-kmenuedit.menu file there (not sure how important that is). I'm guessing the location of that file needs to be confirmed and, probably, the ownership of that directory should be fixed.
Here's the rest of my report.
Background:
I'm a long time Mandrake / Mandriva user (~10 years). I evaluated MGA1 and MGA2 and for different reasons decided not to migrate. I need to migrate soon so I'm hoping MGA3 will finally be the magic bullet. So far, I'm encouraged. There remains a handful of tests that I didn't do yet which are mentioned below. If anyone has any insights about those, feel free to share.
Installation notes:
I was installing on a Toshiba C655 laptop (not my primary machine). For what it's worth, numerous other (older) distros had one problem or another with the hardware on this machine. MGA3 worked flawlessly.
The hard drive had a 6GB partition at the beginning of the drive which contains lots of bad sectors (the rest of the drive is fine). I used custom partitioning > auto allocate to set up the rest of the drive, which it did. It asked to reboot. Upon rebooting, the partitions were present, however there were two problems: 1) the two data partitions were btrfs, and, 2) the mount points were lost. I reset them to ext4 and the appropriate mount points and there were no further problems. This was just a minor annoyance.
Nonfree release was available on the DVD and checked by default. Thank you. This was a major complaint of mine with MGA1 install media which resulted in me not using MGA1 (WiFi inop after install, couldn't update software or use computer normally).
I used the KDE default install. I didn't test custom install (though I'd usually do that). The install process took about 30 minutes. In the early minutes, the to-go meter said 1:45 remaining. At the halfway point, it said :32 remaining. Just sayin'...
At the end of the install process, it asked if I wanted to install updates. I said yes. Nothing happened. It didn't ask me to setup wifi or anything. After reboot, wifi did work right out of the box (this was one thing that didn't work on older / other distros).
Software evaluation:
Flash installed fine. Java was already installed. Initial tests of both using Firefox was quirky or unsuccessful (eg. java hung itself and firefox in the process). After additional attempts, everything worked fine.
Tried briefly to get the root service menu working in dolphin to no avail. The instructions said ruby was required, which I installed before installing the service menu. I tried to copy the resulting script to various places but none worked. It was attempting a different method that led to the K menu editing problem listed at the top of this review. If anyone has any tips for easily getting root Dolphin (or root service menus), I'd love to hear it.
Adobe Acrobat reader doesn't appear to be available directly (not included in the repos, and no task-acroread or anything like that). This (along with browser integration of same) is probably the most important missing package problem I noted. I did download the software directly from Adobe (as an RPM). It appeared to work, though I did not test it extensively. It did not create a menu entry (annoying, especially considering I can't create one of my own due to the above-mentioned problem). I did not attempt to set up browser integration. I hope that's not outrageously difficult. Also, I note that Okular, which is default for PDF, is not set up to view PDFs in the browser. That might be handy. In fact, though I need Adobe for specific tasks, I prefer Okular for every day use. Is there a browser plugin for it?
Where is MAME? Doesn't anyone running Mageia use MAME? Is it lack of demand or controversy over legality?
I didn't test VirtualBox since it would be a lot of work. I do wonder if 3D support works? I'm thinking it should based on the version number. Anyone know?
I didn't test whole disk encryption at install time. I'll likely go back and do that later. I know it worked in 1. I presume it works in 3?
I didn't attempt to use Kmail. Kmail migration is a major concern of mine. This was the reason for me not migrating to MGA2. Does anyone happen to know if this is improved over the initial akonadi migration disaster?
There was one other obscure and unimportant package that I didn't see in the repos.
Aside from the above, my list of 48 software feature / package criteria appear to be satisfied by Mageia 3. Way to go! I'm looking forward to testing the final items and making the migration. If successful, this will be the first new OS I've used since MDV2010.0. Crazy, right?
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to Mageia. It looks like it's gone from non-existent to world-class in just three releases. Amazing!
V-