Welcome, and feel free to introduce yourself

[benmc]

Hello Zak and welcome to Mageia.

Have fun exploring on your Linux journey.

[gaojicainiao]

Hello everyone. I am from a large country which use the most complex language in the world but actually the people are not smarter than any other countries. I do not mind if you hate me, I do not like my homecountry too.

Here let me tell you why I fell in love with Mageia.

At first, I was a newbie of GNU/Linux (now still). I found there are too many GNU/Linux distributions, too many desktop environment, too many different software managing methods. Softwares are more separate and even need users compile by self. Also, I am not an English speaker. So it is very hard for me to get into GNU/Linux world. I hate GNU/Linux, but it is the best.

“Computer experts” in my homecountry are not friendly to newbies. They are accustomed to capitalist softwares or suggest that naked “arch” GNU/Linux to show their skills or just sell their books and lessons.

For me, using first, learning second.

I know my requirements.
Live operating system. I can try first, use it as a movable operating system, install offline, rescue unbootable operating system.
Support my language, at least it should has the font of my language.
Has a lot of applications pre-installed. Especially input method software for my language. Installing and config a input method software by self is complex enough. Having a web browser let me search tutorial when using live mode.
Has graphic driver pre-installed. The graphic chip need not suffer before successfully install graphic driver.
Has an advanced deskop environment for work, not simple for entertainment. Such as Plasma.
Simple and efficient software management. Comprehensive softwares support.
Support multiple file systems so I can try them.
…………
Stable, do not update frequently.

Annoyed of fools' suggestion. Tried distributions one by one. Finally, I found Mageia. The only one and the best one for me!
(^_^)

But I may not active in forum. I am not an English speaker.

[benmc]

Hi gaojicainiao and welcome to Mageia.

Great that Mageia meets some of your needs.
Everyone is a beginner at the start of their Linux journey. Small steps.
We don't know you, so it is very unlikely that Mageia users would hate you without knowing you Just be polite, and treat others as you would like to be treated.

The forum of users here is available to help you on your Mageia journey. If you have problems or need help with Mageia, just ask.
If another user is familiar with your help need, they will respond and attempt to assist you.
You indicate that English is not your First Language, so that may mean that the first responses to your need are more of a clarification to determine the help required.

Dont be put off.

Enjoy using Mageia and Linux.
I have for the last 12 years

[oldboy2]

Hi all,
My name is Bryce (aka oldboy2) from Tasmania Australia
and I just want to say that I am very impressed with the new OS.

The last time I used a Mandriva OS was back in 1998 with the Mandriva Xmas OS.

Since them I've been distro hopping hoping to find an OS that measured up to my taste.

By the way Magiea 9 KDE runs very smoothly on my HP Elite Book with no problems.

[Germ]

Welcome to Mageia!

If you were running it in1998, it was Mandrake. That's when I started. Mandrake > Mandriva > Mageia

[benmc]

Hi oldboy2, and welcome to Mageia.
also:
Hi, from *across the ditch*.

Getting too old / set in my ways, to do the distro dance, and have been with Mageia since Mageia 1. I do dabble with Virtual Machines, just to *compare notes*, with the friendly competition.

Like both you and Germ, an early Mandrake user. I still have most of the installer cds.

[dopski]

I'm Dopski from the Philippines! I am grateful that I am allowed in this forum. I hope to learn more about Mageia in this forum.

[benmc]

Hi Dopski.

Welcome to Mageia.
Have fun exploring on your Linux journey.

[morgano]

Welcome to our forum

And welcome back Sfiet_Konstantin. I see you were here 2011

If you feel like contributing to Mageia, see https://www.mageia.org/en/contribute/

Mageia is completely driven by us members.

[demos95]

Hello
I'm French Using Magia since quite few years now with some old souvenir about "Mandrake" and "Mandriva"
Following also Framasoft and Open Source Comunity
Living in UK currently

[Germ]

Welcome to the forum!

[tortoise]

Hi! I'm tortoise and used Mageia a few years ago when it was Mageia 6. That's when I got my first computer and was learning about Linux. I've since been switching around between multiple Linux distributions but I think I'll be making Mageia my home :)

Once I have my system setup to my liking I'll start reading up on how to help with packaging applications so I can help out with this cozy little distribution! <3

[isadora]

Welcome back in our magical environment tortoise!!!!

Glad to see you back, and even more glad making Mageia your home
But the best part is your intention on supporting to the community.
Help is really needed to keep this gem alive.

[irondave]

Hi folks!
My name is Davide, I'm 34 years old and I live in Italy. My first distro was Mandriva 2008.1 and was love at first sight.
I used Mandriva since the russian invasion (cough... Rosa... cough) but i didn't like it so my distrohopper days begun.
During this time I used Mageia too watching its growth.
I never wrote on this forum but now I feel it's time to contribute.
Let me say thanks for your hard work.

[Germ]

Welcome to Mageia!

[hotbot]

Hi, I have been off and on this distro for a while. I have Mandrake CDs and DVDs I burned still! By the way, you guys need to get that avatar uploading situation sorted -just have it automagically resize uploaded images (like other boards). Anyhow, I am glad to be here. Hello, all! Onward and upward!

[Germ]

Welcome hotbot!

[hotbot]

Welcome hotbot!

Thank ya!

[jwjones]

It would appear as though I have come full circle in my Linux usage. I believe Mandrake was the second Linux distro I discovered and used, after Red Hat 5 or 6 (pre-RHEL and Fedora), back in 1999.

After a very frustrating week of distrohopping on my old ThinkPad T61, I have found Mageia, and lo and behold, everything works beautifully. I had initially installed another Mandriva-based distro who shall remain nameless. Things seemed to work well for a while, until I started getting random freezes and crashes. Attempting to troubleshoot the issues yielded no results. I decided to return to good old Slackware, where I have spent most of my Linux days, but was shocked to run into a number of issues right away, sadly. This has never been my experience with Slackware.

Next up came a run of about a half dozen different Debian-based distros. Each and every one had issues, including Debian itself, also a shocker. At this point I was thinking there must be something wrong with my hardware - how else to explain so much failure?

And then I thought, how about Mageia? I had been using Mageia on the same laptop back during v.8, and recalled that it was very stable and reliable. I don't remember having any issues in my time using it back then. But you know how it goes, a guy can get bored with so much stability and reliability, and so there you go, off on another distrohopping adventure! But these days I'm not feeling so adventurous any more, I just want things to work. I know Linux can often be a case of "roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty," hit the forums, ask questions, check the crash logs, etc., but frankly I'm pretty tired of all that. I also know that in a world of vast differences and configurations of computer hardware (particularly older hardware), it's not entirely fair to blame distro X or Y for not working on said hardware.

And so here I am, back to Mageia. Everything is working quite well. Bonus point for having Strawberry (my favorite music app) preinstalled, and also having the nicest implementation of an IceWM desktop in the Linux world. I seem to remember that Windowmaker was also very nice with Mageia, so I may add that as well. I feel like Mageia deserves more recognition and usage in the Linux world, and so I'm glad to be here. I'm just a slightly above-average user who knows how to use the command line but does not write code, so I'm not really contributor material, other than offering my layman experience and asking any questions that may come up, here. Cheers!

[Germ]

Welcome!

[benmc]

welcome back jwjones

[morgano]

Welcome back and thank you for the enthusiastic feedback. =)

For contributing it may not need much experience. For example help out new users in forum, improve wiki page or for QA just simply try updates before thy are relased to check they still work. Examples that need many to test on different hardware and desktops are web browsers, and office packages updates. Even kernel is usually low risk as the boot menu allows you to select previous kernel in case the new do not work.