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-   -   Why is Mageia so all of a sudden popular? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/mageia-97/why-is-mageia-so-all-of-a-sudden-popular-4175425158/)

VoodooDali 05-11-2013 10:50 AM

It's true that the DistroWatch rankings are an unreliable measure of popularity -- thankfully neither DW nor Mageia claim them to be. However, given that all the other listed distro rankings are influenced in the same ways by the same external forces, there still seems to be a difference.

It may be nothing more than a bunch of people curious as to what the fuss is all about, but I see that in itself as a good thing. :D cheers

widget 05-11-2013 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wchouser3 (Post 4948888)
I just wish I was a little more fluent in yum, rpm, and such. I'm running it on a VM, and it seems like a well-oiled machine. I just don't know how to install the restricted codecs like I do in debian based distros. I can't be without my libdvdcss2. I think it's staying on top of the list because it found it's way toward the top, and people are trying it to see why. In a way, it's kinda dragging it's self along.

If you look at the Mageia site you will find ISO images that include the non-free stuff as an option at install time.

You are also not using yum. You are using urpmi. Documentation is pretty good on it. Been around since Mandrake.

Also, if you are able to boot to your desktop, you should try using the MCC (Mageia Control Center). When it was still Mandrake the Mandrake Control Center was the heart of the system. Still is.

You can easily configure your "media" (Mageia speak for repos) in there. Simple matter of checking boxes.

John VV 05-11-2013 06:50 PM

The only real problem now is that there are just way too many "cookie cutter " distros
and one " shall REMAIN unnamed" major distro that is really diverging the std. linux framework

choice is good , but too much of it ......

from reading the Mageia site
it is including a lot of NON GPL programs
the proprietary ATI/AMD and Nvidia driver and mp3 and x264 and so on .

looking like a "moving from windows "point and click" to a linux "point and click" user distro

Timothy Miller 05-12-2013 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV (Post 4949288)
The only real problem now is that there are just way too many "cookie cutter " distros
and one " shall REMAIN unnamed" major distro that is really diverging the std. linux framework

choice is good , but too much of it ......

from reading the Mageia site
it is including a lot of NON GPL programs
the proprietary ATI/AMD and Nvidia driver and mp3 and x264 and so on .

looking like a "moving from windows "point and click" to a linux "point and click" user distro

It very much is. They have done everything possible to keep you from needing to touch a command line. Which, IMO, is good in some ways. Many people are tired of MS, can't afford the apple tax, but don't have the desire to do more than just USE their computer. And for them, something like Mageia is a very good choice.

Even those that like to learn CAN do it. And urpmi/urpme are GREAT tools for package management, therefore my reason I REALLY wanted to like Mageia.

VoodooDali 05-12-2013 09:57 AM

+1 for what Timothy said. Just because we want to break free from Windows, doesn't mean we want to spend several years learning computer languages and using a text-only interface.

{BBI}Nexus{BBI} 05-12-2013 10:08 AM

Personally I think the fact we have distos that focus on "Point & Click" is a good thing. The fact is no matter how much winblows is disliked the vast majority of computer users have been pre-conditioned to expect point & click. We can go back and forth on the merits of commandline vs gui in the end it all boils down to personal choice. I love problem solving, I also love using the commandline but these are not the reasons I use GNU/Linux. I use it because I am not dictated to on how, when or why I should use it. I am only limited by my own knowledge. Anything (within the spirit of FLOSS) that promotes the easy adoption and ease of use of GNU/Linux gets the thumbs up from me. I agree too much choice can lead to confusion. That confusion can be (on the whole) avoided if users took the time to figure out what it is that they want from a distro and choose accordingly.

GNU/Linux is still marginal in global adoption but has come a long, long way. *vacates soapbox*

Randicus Draco Albus 05-12-2013 10:36 AM

I do not know if it has been changed (I doubt it), but the last time I checked, there were two DVDs: one with European languages and one with Asian languages. I found it very annoying that the Asian disc only has American English. If language inclusion must be frugal, there must be a lot of "extras" on those discs. Compare that to a Debian DVD that contains a complete system and all four DEs, and the Slackware DVD that is only 2 1/2 GB. Makes me wonder what is occupying all the space on Mageia's DVD. I briefly used Mandriva at the time Mageia put out their first release. If they have achieved the goal of creating a Mandriva without the bugs, it would be a good system. I have not gotten around to looking at it yet though.

As for Distro Watch's "rankings", does anyone actually look at that nonsense?

widget 05-12-2013 11:54 PM

I have to admit to some responsibility for the non-free stuff being available from some install media.

Mageia, in its mission statement, says it wants to listen to its users and supply them with a distro they want. They mean this and you can see this if you look at their forum particularly the section dealing with the cauldron (development - mixing the new magic).

Someone mentioned non-free drivers and firmware and so forth. Was not getting a lot of support. I can understand this as I prefer to use FOSS packages myself. However, I have a hard time doing that due to hardware issues.

Debian will now boot to a gui, with rather strange resolution, when I install it. This is very new. I have no trouble getting the tty login and editing my source.list and installing the non-free firmware. Could almost do it in my sleep.

This was not true with Mageia. I am used to APT based as opposed to RPM based systems. The last RPM based OS I had on here was Fedora 17. You can't do things the same way in a Mandrake descended distro the way you do it in Fedora.

I got the stuff install in a chroot from a Debian install with about 4 hours of research into the wonders of urpmi. I enjoyed it and enjoyed the success of getting it done.

I doubt I could have done it using a text based internet browser for the research as I would not have really known how to install the thing if Mageia had been my only install.

If I were going to install it as a dual boot on a box running only MS (mine doesn't but that is where we get new users from) I would have had to do the research on MS write it all down and do it at the tty login.

I could do this. Many of us on this thread could, maybe most of us. Could you have done this on your first attempt to install linux?

This was my contribution to that discussion of what to include on the install disks. I feel that we really need to think about the fact that there are probably more people interested in ditching MS than are doing so. There may be more of them than there are Linux users.

I was lucky in that my son, who had been using Linux for a few years prior to my starting, suggested Ubuntu. It installed and ran. I was not scared by the prospect of installing as I had installed MS several times. How many MS users have done that?

This is a big step for most people. They want some thing they can deal with. They are already showing the willingness to do something differently by merely being will in to attempt to install Linux. We need to encourage this.

Mageia is a young distro with a long history. Mandrake was the original noob friendly distro. My son, by the way, started with Mandrake. So there is nothing new in that line as far as Mageia is concerned.

What is new is that it is not corporate supported. It is a community supported project with some highly talented people and a very good user community that supports them.

We argued (debated) the inclusion of non-free stuff. It was heated and very friendly. In the end they decided that including the option was a good idea. Maybe it wasn't but it is going to be that way with this release.

Everyone is welcome to join their forum. I am sure that they will be asking the same question for Mageia 4. You can bring your perspective on this issue to the Mageia Community the same as I did mine. Perhaps your views will prevail. Would be no problem for me. I think a consensus is a good thing even when I am not getting my way.

Frankly I think it is the Mageia forum and the way that everyone involved in it communicates through there that is making it popular.

The Ubuntu forums were always telling us in the testing forums that it was a waste of time and forum space to talk to each other about what we thought was the best direction to take on any issue. The devs were not ever going to read the forum so shut the hell up.

Now you have the chance, as a disgruntled Ubuntu user, to participate in a forum that the devs are not too good to read. That doesn't just include the people testing Mageia but all the users of Mageia.

This is a big drawing card.

The fact that I had Mageia 2 installed and Mageia 3 at the same time and could see that Mageia 3 was more (generally) reliable than Mageia 2 was also encouraging. In 3 whole releases they have;
>Proposed a new fork of Linux
>Started a new fork of Linux, this is not just a respin of Mandriva. Mandriva would do well to respin Mageia.
>Built a working team of very skilled devs
>Built a community of engaged users.
>Set up their repositories and mirrors so that you should have no trouble getting Mageia
>Turned out one rough release (1) with limited features.
>Turned out one rough release (2) that was full featured
>And finally are about to release a version fit to stand with any distro with Mageia 3.

The only thing that they are lacking is installation automatic support for more than Gnome or KDE. I would say that those of us that prefer other DEs probably can install our own with out a Live DVD. Even if using a RPM based system for the first time. Some of those folk, would however, find installing the non-free components difficult and maybe too time consuming to do the first time around.

Those people can learn. Hell, I did so it can't be that hard. You need a place to stand and be comfortable in to do that learning.

I find it hard to believe that I have only been using Linux for 4 years. I am not college educated. I am a 61 year old agricultural worker. I now feel quite at home with Linux and can also see that I will never learn all I want to about it in the time I have left to do so. I will be giving it a damned good whack though.

Hopefully a lot of folks will feel the need to learn more when they get something installed that works. I think they will see the advantages of doing so. Linux is just too much fun to mess with not to learn more all the time.

I think we need to promote the use of the CLI as one of the basic tools that makes Linux the superior choice on any computer. We also have to realize that the use of the CLI without hand holding and copy/paste commands that make no sense to the user at first is a pretty steep learning curve.

The people that started Mandrake had that in mind when they developed the MCC which is still, in my opinion, the finest Gui configuration and control application (group of applications) in existence. Just about anyone that can get an OS installed will be able to configure the thing from there. If they have the non-free packages installed that are, unfortunately, required by many hardware setups today.

Using urpmi, urpme and urpmq is faster than using the gui in my experience. You have to learn to use it comfortably before it is though.

Now that I have finished this I should leave on a lighter note. I was branded, on the Ubuntu forums as an elitist guru who wanted to keep Linux too hard for new people to use. I am sure that you can tell this is the case in my post here.

And no, I am not accusing people that disagree with me that they are either. This is just my take on things, I just wish those that have expressed differing views lived closer to me in Montana so that we could meet at the Big Sky bar (my wife is tending bar right now there) so I could buy the first round and we could pound on the table for a while. We may be a bit backwards here but we are friendly and the bar even has a wifi hot spot. Stop in if you are in our neck of the high plains.

punchy71 02-05-2014 07:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD (Post 4771918)
The Distrowatch hit rankings are in no way an indicator for the popularity of a distro and shouldn't be taken serious. In the past there were some (successful) attempts to spoil that, it says nothing more than how many people per day have connected to the different sites on Distrowatch, but not how many people have visited the real Mageia page, have downloaded it or are even using it.

I read somewhere that Distrowatch's page hit ranking/rating system is nothing more than a report on how many times per day someone searches for a particular distro. And then it tabulates the results and makes the list of "top 100 most popular distros".

Captain Pinkeye 02-05-2014 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by punchy71 (Post 5111979)
I read somewhere that Distrowatch's page hit ranking/rating system is nothing more than a report on how many times per day someone searches for a particular distro. And then it tabulates the results and makes the list of "top 100 most popular distros".

To be fair, the 'tabulated result' itself is headlined 'Page Hit Ranking'. So it's uneducated people making this a popularity/usage comparison thing.

widget 02-06-2014 04:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Pinkeye (Post 5111985)
To be fair, the 'tabulated result' itself is headlined 'Page Hit Ranking'. So it's uneducated people making this a popularity/usage comparison thing.

What he said.

That has always been very easy to see right there on the top of the page. People really need to learn to read things.

That said, I have to admit having trouble reading things correctly or thoroughly myself at times.

The DistroWatch rankings are quite interesting. They show what distros are being looked at on DistroWatch. Over time this does acurately show some trends.

If a new distro comes out that is any good at all it will move up. This is just people looking for information.

If it is still around the same point a year later that indicates that there is not a lot of bad news about it out there on the wider web. If people are posting a lot of problems with a distro interest is lost rapidly.

The ones toward the top of the rankings have a lot of good things said about them. Some of that is simply due to a good PR team keeping the name out there and saying how wonderful it is.

So it really is up to the user to figure out what is right for them. This has always been the case.

DistroWatch is a very nice service that lists a huge number of distros. Has reviews of a lot of distros. Gives links to other reviews. Lets you know where the home page is and where to download. This really is a great service.

They do not make their site out to be anything but that. Other people do. Ignore the hype. Enjoy the convenience of DistroWatch for what it really is. The biggest list of Linux distros that is easily accessable. Some pretty interesting reading there. Particularly below the top 25 or so distros.

Some of the really specialized ones, toward the bottom, sound pretty good. Particularly if you are a native user of some language not well supported by Linux in general. Or some kind of "out there" computing needs.

Mageia is a very interesting distro. Community based in a branch of Linux not noted for such distros. Small team, enthusiastic user community. Based ultimately on the Mandrake platform, a distro long dead that refuses to really die out. People like to keep up on the news about it.

XenaneX 03-29-2014 01:26 PM

I was looking for an alternative to PCLinuxOS. Had gotten tired of what was going on in their forums. Saw Mageia was popular and had the same base as PCL. But I had to wait and wait for a very long time before Mageia 3 came out. It was worth the wait, everything worked smooth as silk.

PCL had made me skittish about updates but I felt it was best to try and keep Mageia 3 updated. It worked great for a long time but then VCL started acting up and I've had codec/plugin issues lately in Firefox. I will hang with it and hope things smooth out. Still like it a lot.

wchouser3 11-22-2014 10:04 AM

hmmm
 
there's definitely nothing new about the remarkable distro-watch rating. I dare say it's mis-leading given you never hear about anyone actually using it.

widget 11-22-2014 05:34 PM

I think there are quite a few people using it. They have a very active forum with a lot of x-Mandriva users, some back to Mandrake, on it.

I haven't taken a look at it since I got this new box up and running but it really is very good. I need to check on it again because I recommended it to a lot of people new to Linux. Very "noob friendly" if that is actually a reasonable concept for any OS.

That old MCC is really a great gui configuration tool. Arguably the best ever.

XenaneX 11-23-2014 08:52 PM

I have been a Mageia user for 7 months. I was impressed with the speed of internet surfing but that may be more due to Firefox. It is a good distro and likely as good as PCLinuxOS. But, again, I came to dread updates. KWrite broke, VLC broke, among a few other things. I dislilke the new Firefox but that's not Mageia's fault.

But then I installed KaOS (beware, it's not for novices) and Mageia would not start. After three days of trying to fix things, I finally got a solid PCLinuxOS up and running and it looks like Mageia is history.


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