Mageia Harkens Back to the Glory Days of Mandrake Linux

I’ve been using Linux since 1997. As the ’90s came to a close, there were so many new distributions coming out that it would make your head spin.

I remember some of my favorites, one of which was Mandrake Linux. I remember meeting the developers of Mandrake at a Linux convention and thinking they were the coolest of the cool. Those ladies and gents knew how to party, and I joined them often.

But Mandrake wasn’t just about having a good time. Mandrake also happened to be one of the first distributions I remember that did a brilliant job of making Linux accessible to the masses; it was easy to use, reliable and fun.

As is the way with life, all good things must come to an end, and Mandrake flew off into the sunset, never to be heard of again.

Or did it?

Shortly after that, a new distribution came into being based on Mandrake. That distribution was Mandriva.

Guess what?

Mandriva didn’t last long enough.

The good news is that yet another distribution was born out of the rubble, and that distribution is still around. The distribution of which I am speaking is Mageia.

The slogan of Mageia is to “build great tools for people.”

It had been a while since I kicked the tires of Mageia, so I was pretty excited to test those forked waters.

Mageia Live

Like so many flavors of Linux, Mageia ships as a live distribution, which means you can boot it and run it from RAM. As well, you can click the Install on Hard Disk icon on the desktop and be led through the GUI installer.

The Mageia installer isn’t quite as simple as the likes of Ubuntu. You’ll have to answer a few more questions than usual. In some cases, those prompts are a bit misleading. For example, you’ll eventually be asked if you want to download a particular upgrade, but then the installer will warn you that you have to reboot for the upgrade. Don’t do that. Just let the installer continue. You can reboot when the installation is completed.

The installation takes a bit longer than the average Linux distro (around 10 or so minutes), but when it’s done, you’re ready to reboot and go. One of the reasons for the longer installation times is that Mageia also upgrades as it installs, which means you don’t have to bother running an upgrade the second you log in for the first time.

First Impressions

As I mentioned earlier, it’s been a while since I tried Mageia. I opted to go with the KDE Plasma option (there’s also GNOME and Xfce).

When I first logged in, I knew what to expect. After all, this is KDE Plasma, which I’m quite familiar with. One thing that did surprise me was the default theme. I’d become accustomed to distributions defaulting to dark themes, but Mageia opted for the lighter fare, which I’m all for.

Next was the Welcome app, which greeted me with promises of updating, installing, configuring and more. I’m always happy to see Welcome apps because I believe they are a must for those new to Linux, and the Mageia Welcome is as good as any.

One thing that did strike me was in the Install Software tab, where you have the option to select RPMDrake or Dnfdragora (Figure 1). Dnfdragora is a frontend based on the previous rpmdragora, which was originally rpmdrake.

Yeah, it’s a bit confusing.

Figure 1: Don’t let the confusion flummox you.

Here’s the deal. If you click RPMDrake, it’ll open the Software Management GUI, where you can install applications. If you click dnfdragor, it will install dnfdragora, which is a different software management GUI. I installed both of them to see what was what (Figure 2).

Figure 2: RPMDrake is on the left.

In my opinion, I found RPMDrake to be the better of the two. The difference is simple: rpmdrake is primarily used in Mandriva-based systems, while dnfdragora is designed for Fedora and other DNF-based distributions. With Mageia, you get access to both.

Special.

But wait, there’s a third option. If you click on Applications (from the Welcome app), you can quickly install some favorites (Figure 3).

Figure 3: The installation options never cease.

Preinstalled Apps

Speaking of apps, you do get the usual collection of software, such as LibreOffice, the “K Suite” of tools (Kontact, Calendar, Kmail, etc.), Emacs, Firefox and more. You’ll also find a Documentation section in the desktop menu that gives you access to the Live Installer manual and the Mageia Control Center manual.

Speaking of which …

The Mageia Control Center (Figure 4) is sort of an extension of the System Settings app for Mageia that is geared toward admins. You’ll find options for hardware, network, network sharing, lock disks, security, boot and more. I liken the MCC to openSUSE’s YaST (soon to be RIP’d).

Figure 4: The Mageia Control Center is a power user’s Settings app.

Conclusion

Mageia is an outstanding Linux distribution that will remind you a bit of the Linux you used when you first started this journey. However, don’t be fooled; this is a modern distribution with all the modern bells and whistles.

If you’re looking for a new Linux distribution to hop over to, I would highly recommend that you give Mageia a try. Deploy it as a virtual machine (VM) for testing and, if you like it, install it on a spare system.

Download an ISO from the official Mageia downloads page.

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