Third Mageia 3 alpha now available

Following a brief delay due to "some graphic issues", the developers at the Mageia project have released the third and final alpha of Mageia 3 for testing by the community. The new development release upgrades the KDE and GNOME desktop environments to versions 4.9.2 and 3.6.1 respectively, and is the first version to support upgrading from Mageia 2 – however, the developers point out that this "might still need tweaks".

As anticipated, Mageia 3 Alpha 3 now includes a more recent kernel version, specifically Linux 3.6.5, but still includes GRUB as the default bootloader. The developers say that they expect to have GRUB 2, which will be used for the final version, integrated in time for the first beta release. Other changes include upgrading the init system to systemd 195 and updating Ruby to 1.9.3. The Feature Review wiki page includes a detailed list of planned changes and improvements for Mageia 3.

A full list of changes and new features in the alpha is provided in the release notes, while a list of known issues can be found on the Errata wiki page. Mageia 3 Alpha 3 is available to download as an installer CD or DVD, or as a LiveDVD with GNOME or KDE for both 32- and 64-bit systems. Those testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.

According to the Development Planning schedule, the latest development release will be followed by three betas and a release candidate; the final version is expected to arrive on 20 March 2013. The current stable release is Mageia 2 from May of this year.

See also:

• Mageia 2 arrives with GNOME 3 and systemd, a report from The H.

(crve)