Mageia 2 Alpha 1 released for testing

The Mageia project has announced the release of a first alpha of version 2.0 of its Mandriva Linux community fork. According to the Development Planning schedule, the first milestone will be followed by two more alpha releases, two betas and a release candidate; the final version is expected to arrive on 3 May 2012.

Aimed at developers and testers, Mageia 2 Alpha 1 is based on the 3.1.2 Linux kernel with either KDE SC 4.7.3 or GNOME 3.3.2, the current unstable development release of what will become GNOME 3.4, as the default desktop. Alternatively, users can install the lightweight LXDE desktop using the task-lxde meta package. The developers note that systemd integration is not yet finalised, possibly causing "some side effects", and new artwork has yet to be integrated into the early alpha build.

Users are asked to to focus their testing on hardware detection, the boot process, ISO content and the included desktops, as well as "filtering out references to Mageia 1". As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Those testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.

More details about the development preview, including a list of known issues, can be found in the release notes and on the technical specification page. Mageia 2 Alpha 1 is available to download for 32- and 64-bit systems from the project's site. The current stable release is Mageia 1.0 from June of this year.

See also:

• New roadmap for Mageia 2 published, a report from The H.
• Mageia reveals release strategy, a report from The H.
• Mandriva Linux forked into Mageia community distribution, a 2010 report from The H.

(crve)