Hello, I am a fairly long time Linux enthusiast and Mageia is one of my favorites. It take a bit more work to set up - gathering codecs for DVD and audio, but once set - and in MATE dt - IMHO it is great! I lean more towards lower overhead desktops XFCE, LXDE, E, Fluxbox (specifically when set up nicely like in AntiX). I tried MATE in Mageia as well as Ubuntu and grew fond of it. Both are good representations, but the Mageia version runs faster on my old hardware and I like the fact the Mageia is keeping the old - dead in water but still highly functional - even today - XARA LX (sad that a compromise was not reached).
I look forward to Mageia 6 - especially after taking a look via a live thumb drive test (was unable to install on the hard drive).
The only things I still wrestle with are the log in screen - how to customize. In other distros there is a link in the menu opening a panel to allow you to easily customize the login screen.
The other is wifi connection - can't seem to get it to set to automatic start and re-link if the signal glitches.
So will look through the forum and tutorials to see I I can find the above.
All that said - I have been a distro hopper testing as many as possible and Mageia is in my top six - which I have trouble deciding from so swap out periodically.
So look forward to version 6 but in no rush - would rather see version 5 get some style additions and latest application versions of Inkscape, Mypaint, etc. added in a new ISO release and wait for a highly polished version 6. I have seen other distros try to rush to meet a made up release date and take a couple steps backwards along with some steps forwards.
Linked a screen cap of my daily web laptop (an old mini dinosaur Dell D430) - I like to set up the style in every distro I use - part of being a Linux Geek
Best regards,
Ron