Second Mageia 2 beta arrives

The Mageia project has released the second and final beta for version 2.0 of its Mandriva Linux community fork. Aimed at developers and testers, the Beta 2 release follows the recent feature and artwork freezes from earlier this month and will be followed by a release candidate on 10 April; the final version is scheduled to arrive on 3 May 2012.

Mageia 2 Beta 2 is based on the 3.3-rc7 Linux kernel and includes as the default desktop a choice of KDE SC 4.8.1 or an unstable development release (GNOME 3.3.x) of what will become GNOME 3.4. The beta also integrates a pre-release version of PulseAudio 2.0; the GNU C Library (glibc) has been updated to version 2.14.1. As expected, other changes include upgrades to the default packages and fixes for various bugs found in the previous beta.

However, there are still a number of known problems such as upgrade problems related to KDE and problems with the LibreOffice KDE integration plugin; a full list of these can be found on the Errata wiki page. The developers remind users that the beta is not for daily or production use. Those testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.

Further information about this second beta can be found in the release notes and on the Mageia 2 technical specifications page. Mageia 2 Beta 2 is available to download as an ISO image for 32- and 64-bit systems. The current stable release is Mageia 1.0 from June 2011.

See also:

• Mandriva community fork Mageia 1.0 released, a report from The H.
• Mandriva Linux forked into Mageia community distribution, a report from The H.

(crve)