Two years after the last release, the new version of the Linux distribution “Mageia 7” was recently released, within which an independent community of enthusiasts is developing the fork of the Mandriva project.
This new version of Mageia 7 features a large number of package updates compared to Mageia 6, including the Linux 5.1 kernel, the default KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop, the Mesa 19.1 open-source graphics drivers, DNF 4.2.6, Firefox 67, and many other updates.
Main new features of Mageia 7
This new version of the distro has received several improvements, the first of which can be seen on the login welcome screen, as the welcome application has been completely redesigned to help users set up initial configurations and select additional applications.
The new implementation is written in Python and Qt/QML, supports scaling, and uses desktop fonts.
The ability to use the rEFInd boot manager on UEFI systems instead of the default GRUB2 was added.
The installer has expanded hardware support, updated the tools for using NFS , implemented the ability to install the drive from any supported file system, added automatic installation mode from the hard drive, and made numerous improvements to the interface for working with disk partitions.
Performance has been improved on laptops with hybrid graphics systems (Optimus), which combine an integrated Intel GPU and a discrete NVIDIA card. An experimental utility, mageia-prime, has been added to configure NVIDIA Prime and switch from an Intel GPU to an NVIDIA GPU without using the Bumblebee package.
It is also worth noting that support for distributing metadata in the zchunk format has been added to the DNF package manager , which, in addition to a good level of compression, provides support for delta changes that allow downloading only changed parts of the file.
Software
Regarding the distribution's software, we can find the updated graphics stack, video drivers, and suggested user environments : Mesa 19.1, X.Org Server 1.20.4, Qt 5.12.2, GTK+ 3.24.8, KDE Plasma 5.15.4, GNOME 3.32, Xfce 4.14pre (suggested components from the experimental Xfce 4.13 branch using GTK+3 instead of GTK+2), LXQt 0.14.1, MATE 1.22.0, Cinnamon 4.0, Enlightenment E22.4.
Also included is the use of the Linux kernel 5.1.14, GCC 8.3.1, rpm 4.14.2, dnf 4.2.6, LLVM 8.0.0, Python 3.7.3 (version 2.7.16 is also available), Perl 5.28.2, Ruby 2.5.3, Rust 1.35, PHP 7.3, Firefox 67 Chromium 73, LibreOffice 6.2.3, Vim 8.1, NeoVim 0.3.5, VirtualBox 6.0.8, Xen 4.12.
Wayland support has been expanded. The Gnome environment now uses Wayland by default ("Gnome on Xorg" and "GNOME Classic" sessions are optionally available).
For KDE to work on the basis of Wayland, the plasma-workspace-wayland package has been added to the repository.
Regarding the expiration of MP3 patents, MP3 codec libraries have been added to the main repository and the basic structure.
In Isodumper, a utility to write ISO images to external drives, work with an unprivileged user (root rights are now requested only when writing or changing partition table), and verify registry integrity with sha512 hash.
Hardware
Regarding support for different devices, work continued on the development of ports for the ARMv7 and Aarch64 architectures, which are still experimental.
From the achievement, we see the provision of packages for ARMv7 and Aarch64 in the main repository (kernel). Installation images and installers for ARM still, but they plan to prepare in the next few months.
Download and get Mageia 7
For those who are interested in being able to test or install this new version of the distribution on their computers.
You should know that the disto images on 32-bit and 64-bit (4 GB) DVD sets are now available for download.
Also available is a minimalist image for installation over the network (32 MB) and also the liveCD versions based on GNOME, KDE and Xfce.
The system image can be recorded with the help of Etcher, which is a multiplatform tool.
The download link is this.