Two years after the last release, the launch of the new version of the Linux distribution "Mageia 7" was recently published, within which an independent community of enthusiasts is developing the fork of the Mandriva project.
This new version of Mageia 7 features a lot of package updates compared to Mageia 6, including the Linux 5.1 kernel, the default KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop, the open source Mesa 19.1 graphics drivers, DNF 4.2.6, Firefox 67 and many other updates.
Main new features of Mageia 7
This new version of the distro, It has received several improvements, among which can be seen initially in the first welcome screen login, as the Welcome application has been completely redesigned to help users configure initial settings and select additional applications.
The new implementation is written in Python and Qt / QML, supports scaling and uses desktop fonts.
Added ability to use rEFInd boot manager on UEFI systems instead of the default GRUB2.
The installer has expanded hardware support, updated tools to use NFS, has implemented the ability to install the drive from any supported file system, added automatic installation mode from hard disk, made numerous interface improvements for working with disk partitions.
Improved work on laptops with hybrid graphics systems (Optimus), which combine the integrated Intel GPU and a discrete NVIDIA card. An experimental mageia-prime utility has been added to configure NVIDIA Prime and switch from an Intel GPU to an NVIDIA GPU without using the Bumblebee package.
As well it is noted that support for metadata distribution 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 software we can find the update of the 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 of the experimental branch Xfce 4.13 using GTK + 3 instead de GTK + 2), LXQt 0.14.1, MATE 1.22.0, Cinnamon 4.0, Enlightenment E22.4.
Also included is the use of 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 patents for MP3, libraries with MP3 codec have been added to the main repository and backbone
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 the support to the 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 link of download is this.