After one and a half years of development, the Mageia team has finally released a stable version of Mageia 8. It will receive security and bug fix support for 18 months, till October 2022.
The latest version 8 also includes tons of updates ranging from new packages, Linux kernel to the graphical stack, and the base system upgrade.
New Features In Mageia 8
At the core, version 8 now ships the latest long-term support (LTS) Linux kernel 5.10.16, which provides better graphics with updated Mesa to v20.3.4.
Subsequently, Mageia 8 now uses the new GL Vendor Neutral Dispatch (GLVND) to resolve issues with OpenGL support on modern Linux systems.
With the new vendor-neutral libGL implementation, you can also install Mesa and third-party GL drivers in parallel. It will enable additional performance and functionality for hybrid GPU configurations.
Furthermore, Mageia also now uses the free video drivers for AMD/ATI graphics cards, AMDGPU for newer cards, and Radeon for older graphics cards.
Among the core packages, it has removed support for Java 8 (though still available) and upgraded the Java stack to version 11. In addition to this, most Python2 modules and software like Iceape and PlayOnLinux are no longer available in Mageia 8.
Speaking of desktop environments, it does include the latest versions such as Plasma 5.20.4, GNOME 3.38, Xfce 4.16, MATE 1.24.2, LXQt 0.16.0, and Cinnamon 4.8.3.
Here are the highlights of other key enhancements in Mageia 8:
- Faster package metadata parsing using Zstd
- Glibc 2.32, GCC 10.2.1, LLVM 10.0.1, X.Org 1.20.10
- RPM 4.16.1.2, DNF v4.6.0
- Chromium 88 (x86_64-only), Firefox 78.7 (ESR), LibreOffice 7.0.4.2
- GNOME 3.38.3
- Live ISO now boots without configuring X.Org with faster installation
- For UEFI boot, the rEFInd boot manager is now supported as an alternative to GRUB2
For complete information about Mageia 8 and the upgrade path from Mageia 7, check out its official release notes.
However, if you’re planning to install it from scratch, grab the torrent file or direct ISO image from here.
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