Mageia 9 Release Notes - Mageia wiki
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Synopsis:
Presentation of the evolution, new features, known issues, and the recent changes of the Mageia distribution.
Contents
Introduction
1.1
Available installation media
1.2
The Mageia repositories
1.2.1
32-bit repositories on 64-bit systems
Release highlights
2.1
Smaller disk footprint
2.2
The RPM DB has switched to SQLite
Major developments
3.1
Installation
3.1.1
Stage 1
3.1.2
Stage 2
3.1.3
Rescue
3.1.4
Live ISO
3.1.5
Hardware support
3.2
Localisation (l10n) / Internationalisation (i18n)
3.2.1
Manuals
3.2.2
Software translations
3.3
Package management
3.3.1
New RPM
3.3.2
DNF: the alternative package manager
3.3.3
AppStream
3.3.4
perl-URPM and urpmi
3.4
Tools
3.4.1
Mageia Control Center
3.4.2
Other
3.4.2.1
MageiaWelcome
3.4.2.2
Isodumper
3.4.2.3
Docker
3.4.2.4
LiveCD Tools
3.4.2.5
draklive2
3.4.2.6
Memtest86+
3.4.2.7
remove-old-kernels
3.5
Base system
3.5.1
Kernel and hardware support
3.5.2
Graphic drivers
3.5.2.1
X Window System (X11)
3.5.2.2
AMD video drivers
3.5.2.2.1
Proprietary AMD driver
3.5.2.3
NVIDIA drivers
3.5.2.3.1
Proprietary NVIDIA driver
3.5.2.3.2
Optimus laptops
3.5.3
Sound servers
3.5.4
Bootloaders
3.6
Desktop environments
3.6.1
Plasma
3.6.1.1
liquidshell
3.6.1.2
sddm-theme-coffee-ng
3.6.2
GNOME
3.6.3
LXDE
3.6.4
Xfce
3.6.5
LXQt
3.6.6
MATE
3.6.7
Cinnamon
3.6.8
Enlightenment
3.6.9
Light window managers
3.6.9.1
IceWM
3.7
Office apps
3.8
Internet apps
3.8.1
Wayland support
3.8.1.1
Firefox and Thunderbird
3.8.1.2
Chromium, Chrome and Teams
3.9
Multimedia apps
3.10
Editors
3.11
Games
3.12
Education
3.13
Software Development
3.13.1
Compilers and tools
3.13.2
Virtualization
3.13.2.1
VirtualBox
3.13.3
Programming languages
3.14
Server applications
3.14.1
Nextcloud
3.14.2
Veyon
Upgrading from Mageia 8
4.1
Preparations
4.2
Online-Upgrade
4.2.1
Online-Upgrade, using mgaonline (GUI)
4.2.2
Online-Upgrade, using urpmi (CLI)
4.2.3
Online-Upgrade, using DNF (CLI)
4.3
Using the installer to Upgrade
4.4
Upgrading using the traditional DVD ISO
4.5
Upgrading using the Netinstall ISO
4.6
Upgrading an encrypted install
Known issues
5.1
User action needed
5.2
Bugs
5.2.1
Bug reporting
Packages removed from the distribution
6.1
Without removal on upgrade
6.2
Replaced on upgrade
6.3
With removal on upgrade
Introduction
Mageia (from Greek
μαγεία
(mageía) - magic, enchantment) is a free and open-source operating system from the GNU/Linux family of operating systems. Mageia is developed by a community of dedicated users, and backed by the non-profit organisation Mageia.org - a group of individuals elected by the Mageia Board. Whether you're a first-time GNU/Linux user, a software developer, an experienced system administrator or a casual web-surfer, Mageia is the right choice for you. Mageia can be installed on a computer as both the main operating system and an alternative to one or several other installed operating systems.
Note that versions listed in this page are for the release medias.
During a Mageia release lifetime we push thousands of updates and hundreds of
backports
packages.
For example find here current lists of Mageia 9 x86_64
updates
and
backports
packages.
Available installation media
Mageia can be installed using three types of installation media:
Classic install ISOs
(32-bit and 64-bit versions), which use the
traditional DrakX installer
. The ISOs contain all supported locales, a large variety of packages to choose from during installation (common desktop environments) and all non-free drivers. The use of non-free packages can be disabled during the installation. Note that by decision, Classic Installer will not use non-free drivers during install, so you may need wired Ethernet if you wish to use online repositories for updates during install.
Network install ISOs
(32-bit and 64-bit versions, available in both free and non-free versions. Note: Net-install ISOs are
not
adapted to boot on 32-bit EFI) are minimally-sized and only contain a
Stage 1
installer, which contains only the most basic hardware support to boot, connect to a network and download a stage 2 installer. You may require the non-free version to obtain the necessary proprietary drivers, for example for WiFi connectivity. From this point onward, the installation process is very similar to that of a traditional ISO, the only difference being that all necessary and optional packages are fetched from remote repositories. Note: It is a good idea to perform a minimal installation, and continue the rest of the installation after booting to the target system. This is especially recommended during Mageia's development stages (alpha, beta, RC), where packages and files change frequently and unexpectedly.
Live ISOs
can be used to boot directly into Mageia or to install Mageia to a fixed drive. The four Live installation medium choices includes three desktop environments to choose from; Plasma (64-bit), GNOME (64-bit) and Xfce (32- or 64-bit). It also contains all supported locales and comes with extensive hardware support, as well as an assortment of various packages, making the Live ISOs the simplest and quickest way to get started with Mageia. The Live ISOs support the
memory persistence
feature, which allows for preservation of user files and the customisation of the system at the next boot. The files can also optionally be encrypted. Thanks to this, you can now take Mageia and your files everywhere with you! Furthermore, you can also
spin your own live installation medium!
Tip: To optimise updates, you can uninstall packages; see more on
Removing packages#Persistent Live USB
All ISO images can be burned to a DVD or dumped to an USB flash drive. For further information please see the
Installation Media
wiki page about how to choose, download, check, fix, burn, use the media, and restore USB stick.
The different download options can be found on the
Mageia 9 download page
. Both direct (FTP and HTTP) and BitTorrent downloads are available.
For more information, have a look at
Select and use ISOs
in our installer manual.
The Mageia repositories
The software packages that are included in Mageia reside in three different repositories, depending on the type of licence applied to each package. Here is an overview of these repositories:
Core
: The Core repository includes packages with free and open-source software (FOSS). - i.e. packages licensed under a free and open-source licence, such as the GPL. The "Core" media, along with the "Core Release" and "Core Updates" software repositories are enabled by default.
Non-free
: The Non-free repository includes packages that are both free to use and free to distribute, but that contain proprietary software (hence the name - 'Non-free'). This repository houses proprietary AMD/ATI and NVIDIA graphics card drivers, firmware for a various WiFi cards and more.
The Non-free repository is enabled by default in the installer, but can be disabled if necessary.
Tainted
: The Tainted repository includes packages which are released under a free license, but which infringe on patents and copyright laws in some countries, e.g., multimedia codecs needed to play various audio/video files, packages needed to play commercial video DVDs and so on.
The Tainted repository is available but disabled by default, i.e., it's completely opt-in. It is a good idea to verify your region's laws before using packages from this repository.
32-bit repositories on 64-bit systems
32-bit repositories are configured, but disabled by default on 64-bit systems. Some 64-bit programs such as
Steam
require dependencies found in 32-bit repositories. Therefore, if you would like to install software which depends on 32-bit packages, make sure that you have the "Core 32-bit Release" and "Core 32-bit Updates" repositories enabled in
RPMDrake
. Likewise, some 64-bit packages from the Non-free or Tainted repositories could depend on 32-bit packages from their respective repositories. Thus, it is strongly recommended to always enable repositories
in pairs
(32-bit
together
with 64-bit) so as to not encounter issues while updating.
Release highlights
Smaller disk footprint
The size of the minimal install (when disabling the recommended packages) has been reduced. - It's the smallest since Mageia 4.
The RPM DB has switched to SQLite
The RPM database no longer uses the old and unmaintained Berkeley DB. It now uses the modern SQLite. Conversion is performed during upgrade from Mageia 8.
Major developments
Installation
Stage 1
NFS support is done using system tools rather than our 15 years old forked NFS code, thus gaining support for NFSv4 & co...
When using an http server, it's now possible to specify a port different than the default "80" (
mga#
28367
The stage1 images are compressed with Zstd instead of gzip
Stage 2
Lots of bug fixes and improvements in the partitioner
Options:
Add "downloader=curl" in order to switch from wget to curl for downloading packages
Rescue
The rescue system has been enhanced.
Live ISO
The NetworkManager system service is now enabled by default on the Plasma Live ISO (this was already done for the GNOME and Xfce Live ISOs in previous releases). This allows network connections to be managed via the Plasma system settings tool as well as by the traditional Mageia network management tools.
Hardware support
Localisation (l10n) / Internationalisation (i18n)
Manuals
The manuals for the traditional installer and for the Mageia Control Center have been (partially) translated into many more languages. See
our official documentation
An English screenshot is used when a localized screenshot is unavailable for an HTML manual.
PDF and EPUB manuals are created only when more than half of the needed localized screenshots for those manuals are available.
Software translations
New translations have been added, while others were improved.
Thank you to our dedicated community of translators for your reliable work.
Package management
New RPM
RPM has been upgraded to version 4.18.
rpm DB is now backed by SQLite instead of libdb
More information on changes from RPM 4.16 (which shipped with Mageia 8) to RPM 4.18 is available from the RPM website:
RPM 4.17.0:
RPM 4.18.0:
DNF: the alternative package manager
DNF (Dandified Yum) was introduced as an alternative to urpmi since Mageia 6.
DNF is a next-generation dependency resolver and high-level package management tool that traces its ancestry to two projects: Fedora's YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) and openSUSE's SAT Solver (libsolv). DNF was forked from YUM several years ago in order to rewrite it to use the SAT Solver library from openSUSE and to massively restructure the codebase so that a sane API would be available for both extending DNF (via plugins and hooks) and building applications on top of it (such as graphical frontends and system lifecycle automation frameworks).
DNF comes with enhanced problem reporting, advanced tracking of weak dependencies, support for rich dependencies (see the RPM release notes for more on this), and more detailed transaction information while performing actions.
Mageia 9 ships with DNF v4.14.0.
System upgrades using DNF are supported. See the
section on upgrading with DNF
in the release notes for more information.
More information on modularity:
DNF release notes:
With fresh installations via the classical and live media, DNF will be installed in parallel with urpmi. Depending on the method used to upgrade to Mageia 9, it may be necessary to install the
dnf
package to have it available.
For information on how to use DNF, please refer to the wiki page:
Using DNF
AppStream
Our RPM-MD (RPM MetaData) repositories (used by DNF and PackageKit) provide AppStream metadata. Tools like GNOME Software (GNOME Desktop, packaged as
gnome-software
) and Plasma Discover (KDE Plasma Desktop, packaged as
discover
) leverage AppStream metadata to provide a rich experience when searching, identifying, and managing applications.
AppStream is a cross-distribution effort for enhancing software repositories by standardizing software component metadata. It enables an application-centric view on package repositories and provides specifications for things needed to create user-friendly application centers.
See the AppStream website for more information:
perl-URPM and urpmi
Doc has been enhanced (eg:
URPM
urpm
& CPAN)
urpmi
perl-URPM
support a wider range of rpm versions, from rpm-4.9 to latest 4.18, from perl-5.8 to perl-5.37
Various bug fixes have been made
Urpmi metadata are compressed with Zstd instead of Xz (faster parsing)
Tools
Mageia Control Center
Our sound manager, draksound, in
MCC
have been enhanced to easily switch between PulseAudio and
PipeWire
Other
MageiaWelcome
The 'Welcome' screen is an application that is presented to users when booting into a fresh installation of Mageia. It has now been entirely reworked to have a linear approach, with successive steps following in a logical order of important things to know and do post-installation. By default, it will run at each subsequent boot, but this behaviour is optional. Even if the auto-run option is disabled - it can be invoked at any time as an application (mageiawelcome).
Isodumper
Isodumper
is a tool to write ISO images on memory devices. The interface has been reworked to allow successive operations to be done in one shot.
Docker
The Docker ecosystem has been augmented (based on the 24.0.5 version of the engine) with many additional tools such as docker buildx (BuildKit plugin) and docker compose v2 (orchestration with format version 3 support as plugin, replacing the separate binary of version 1), containerd (daemon controlling runC), docker-registry (share of images), and python-docker (python 3 libraries for engine API management).
Note that up to Mageia 8, Docker (up to 20.10.x) was using aufs storage by default. Starting with Mageia 9, aufs storage isn't supported anymore and Docker is using overlay2 storage (from 24.0.x up). During upgrade all images are saved and restored to allow for a smooth migration, however, this requires time *and * free storage under the directory used (
/var/cache/docker
by default).
On a system with 525 images sizing 88 Go compressed, migration through urpmi took 34 hours for backup and 2 hours for restore. So it is advised to run this operation separately from the system release upgrade to avoid a long lock on the RPM database and allow to control it. We suggest to before upgrading Mageia 9, adding docker to
/etc/urpmi/skip.list
to avoid it being updated, and after successful Mageia upgrade and you are sure you have time and disk space, remove it from list and perform system update.
LiveCD Tools
With Mageia 9, the LiveCD Tools have been rebased to the latest version (v27.1).
For information on how to use the LiveCD Tools, please refer to the wiki page:
Using the LiveCD Tools
draklive2
The GUI mode has been enhanced to include the summary stage from the classical installer, allowing easy configuration of locales, timezones, system services, and firewalls. The individual package selection stage now includes a flat list mode, removing the restrictions on what packages can be selected.
For more information, please refer to the wiki page:
draklive2
Memtest86+
PCMemTestT which was a fork was merged back into Memtest86+ memory test utility. So Memtest86+ replaces PCMemTest as the memory test utility on all the Mageia ISOs. It may also be installed on a user's system, where it will be automatically added to the system boot menu.
remove-old-kernels
This is a new tool which removes old kernels from systems. It works in the background without any user intervention and defaults to keeping the three most recently installed kernels. This resolves an issue which could cause systems with limited storage to run out of root partition space after many kernel updates. As well as the default automatic mode which is run weekly it may be configured and run manually from the command line. Run with -h option to see help. It is also available to be run from the Mageia main menu where it may be found under
Tools -> System tools
. There is also a man page which covers more detail for expert users.
Note:
If you upgrade from Mageia 8 the tool is not installed as part of the upgrade process.
You need to install
remove-old-kernels
to get access to this tool
mga#
31642
Base system
Kernel and hardware support
Mageia 9 ships with kernel 6.4.
All hardware managed by this kernel version is enabled. The kernel provides better graphics with Mesa 3D 23.1.
Other kernel flavors are included, particularly, kernel-linus (a vanilla stock kernel without any extra patchset). See the wiki page
Kernel_flavours
for more information.
The Single-queue I/O schedulers were removed upstream since kernels 5.0 . If you need ionice utility, consider installing a new
ionice-scheduler
package which enables BFQ scheduler for rotational disks.
cpupower and powersave
Graphic drivers
Mesa 3D has been updated to Mesa 3D 23.1.
X Window System (X11)
Mageia 9 ships with X.Org 21.1.8.
XWayland 22.1.9 has been split from the Xserver and is packaged as standalone tool for easier maintenance.
AMD video drivers
Mageia 9 uses the free video drivers for AMD/ATI graphics cards, AMDGPU for newer cards and Radeon for older graphics cards. Compared with Mageia 8, hardware support has been increased and performance has been improved.
In case of a hybrid card, the
solution
exposed with the nouveau driver and the precommand DRI_PRIME=n is also working, at least with the Radeon driver.
Proprietary AMD driver
The proprietary AMDGPU-PRO driver currently only works with X.org 1.1xx, so it cannot be used in Mageia 9. The OpenCL and HIP parts are being worked on, keep an eye on the Testing repo...
AMD-GPU
Radeon Pro
, including
ROCm
The proprietary AMDGPU-PRO driver currently only works with X.org 1.1xx, so it cannot be used in Mageia 9.
UPDATE:
We have taken a step forward, by offering a way to easily download and install two packages for AMD graphics cards, which offer some advanced features such as the activation of opencl for performance improvement in processes such as rendering in Blender and other 3D tools like CAD and PCB tools,and processing modules in Darktable, Steam games, Gimp, Libreoffice and any other application that requires these advanced features. For further information see
here.
NVIDIA drivers
The current libre Xorg Nouveau driver has enhanced hardware support and performance compared to Mageia 8.
We also have the Xorg modesetting driver
(Which one that works best depends on your GPU.)
Proprietary NVIDIA driver
NVIDIA's proprietary drivers are provided in the nonfree repositories, 64 bit only:
Recent GPUs are supported by the R535 series driver packaged as "nvidia-current", chosen by "Geforce 745 series and later" in our tools. We also have "nvidia-newfeature", chosen by "Driver: New feature" - It is intended as alternative for newest cards
but note that we may not keep nvidia-newfeature up to date and in sync with kernel, and it may actually be less recent than nvidia-current. Actual version can be seen by the package version. Not available on Mageia 9 ISOs nor in repositories at release time of Mageia 9.
For older GPUs, we supply R470 series drivers "nvidia470", chosen by "Geforce 635 to Geforce 920" in our tools. R470 was "nvidia-current" in Mageia 8, and some cards that used that then may need be manually set to R470 in Mageia 9.
NVIDIAs proprietary 390.x driver series, which supported older graphic cards like the GF1xx series, is EOL (end of life) since the end of 2022. Because the driver is not compatible with newer Kernel and newer X Server versions we had to drop it. Please try the free Xorg driver nouveau or modesetting.
CUDA and OpenCL are supported for "nvidia-current".
For more information see
here
Optimus laptops
Some laptops comes with "Hybrid Graphics", meaning they have two GPU: one is usually "internal" (or "integrated") into the CPU, and is called IGP (Integrated Graphic Processor), and the other is "dedicated", external to the CPU, and it is called "discrete" (DGP, Discrete/Dedicated Graphics Processor). The integrated is power efficient, while the discrete is faster.
Owners of
NVIDIA Optimus
laptops (integrated Intel or AMD/ATI CPU+GPU, plus a discrete NVIDIA GPU) now have three ways to benefit from the power of their NVIDIA GPU:
The free Nouveau drivers support
Prime GPU offloading
out of the box, which can be used via the DRI_PRIME=1 environment variable (unless the proprietary NVIDIA driver is in use by, e.g., Mageia-prime). Refer to the
Nouveau documentation
to see how to configure X.Org to use NVIDIA Prime with DRI3.
As in Mageia 8, the
Bumblebee
package can be used to bridge the monitor to the NVIDIA GPU, allowing to access its processing power albeit with some overhead.
A new tool named
Mageia-prime
can be used to configure the NVIDIA Prime supported by recent Linux kernels and X.Org servers. It allows to fully switch to using the NVIDIA GPU without the overhead of Bumblebee, and is particularly suited for use with CUDA.
In all three cases, when configuring the graphics drivers, one must during install and the usual Mageia tools configure only the integrated GPU (at least in most Optimus configurations), as it is
typically
the only one physically connected to a monitor. (If failing, try the other way around.)
Sound servers
Mageia 9 supports both PulseAudio and PipeWire as sound servers.
By default both gets installed, but only PulseAudio is enabled.
We
here
provide instructions on how to switch between PulseAudio and PipeWire backend. You can also use
Mageia Control Center
Bootloaders
GRUB2 has been updated to
2.06
For UEFI boot, the
rEFInd boot manager
is supported as an alternative to GRUB2.
Desktop environments
All the
desktop environments
mentioned below are included in Mageia's online repositories, and can be installed in parallel on any Mageia 9 system. Some of them are also included on the physical media, LiveDVDs and Classical DVDs, as specified in each section.
Plasma
Plasma, the desktop environment from the KDE community, is provided as version 5.27.5, built on top of Qt 5.15.7 and KDE Frameworks 5.105 and with KDE Applications 23.04.1.
If you want to try Plasma under
Wayland
, install plasma-workspace-wayland, and it should appear in your favourite display manager's list of desktop environments at log in.
Note also that Wayland session with Nvidia's R535 (nvidia-current) nonfree driver is available by making sure that "nokmsboot" is removed and "nouveau.modeset=0" is passed to Kernel command line. - This is provided as Technology Preview for testers.
The default display manager (DM) for the Plasma desktop environment is the Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM).
Ksysguard is replaced by plasma-systemmonitor.
Plasma has a specific 64-bit LiveDVD and it can also be installed from the Classical DVD ISO (traditional installer).
liquidshell
liquidshell
is an alternative to plasmashell
It does not use QtQuick but instead relies on QtWidgets, therefore no hardware graphics acceleration is needed.
In Mageia 9
liquidshell
is included in the repositories, once installed you can see liquidshell as option in your Display Manager.
sddm-theme-coffee-ng
We have work on enhance the presentation of mageia, as part of that work we include an alternative theme for sddm,
sddm-theme-coffee-ng
let us know what you think!
GNOME
GNOME 44.2 is provided. It now defaults to running on Wayland, but also provides an alternative "GNOME on Xorg" session.
Note that with Nvidia's nonfree drivers, GNOME defaults to start an X11 session.
For those preferring the GNOME 2 look and feel, GNOME 3 also provides a "Gnome Classic" session.
GNOME "Flashback" has also been added as yet another alternative. It provides a similar user experience to the GNOME 2.x series sessions. The differences to the MATE project is that GNOME Flashback uses GTK+ 3 and tries to follow the current GNOME development by integrating recent changes of the GNOME libraries.
GNOME has a specific 64-bit LiveDVD and it can also be installed from the Classical DVD ISO (traditional installer).
LXDE
The very lightweight GTK+3-based desktop environment is still available and continues to receive improvements from upstream and our Mageia maintainer, even though its community has partly refocused on LXQt. Starting with Mageia 9, LXDE migrated from GTK+2 to GTK+3. LXDE cannot use PipeWire as sound server, only PulseAudio.
LXDE can be installed from the Classical DVD ISO (traditional installer).
Xfce
Xfce 4.18
is provided.
Xfce has dedicated 32-bit and 64-bit LiveDVDs and it can also be installed from the Classical DVD ISO (traditional installer).
LXQt
LXQt 1.3.0 is provided and included in the Classical ISO.
To adjust the settings of the transparency compositor
picom
, in combination with the window manager
openbox
, you can install
picom-conf
LXQt is now provided with Kvantum to allow the settings of various themes. It can also be used with Plasma.
MATE
MATE 1.26.0 is provided.
MATE can be installed from the Classical DVD ISO (traditional installer). Due to DVD space considerations, some applications such as mate-screenshot (screenshot application) are not included in Classical DVD ISO. For a full MATE Desktop experience, users are advised to install
task-mate
package after initial installation.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon 5.6 is provided.
Cinnamon can be installed from the Classical DVD ISO (traditional installer).
Enlightenment
The Enlightenment task package comes with E25.4 and Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) 1.26.3. The major 0.25 release features a completely new, flat theme with both preconfigured alternative colour palettes (including a light theme) and the ability to edit the colours. In addition, there is another Mageia-branded theme, m-Dimensions, based on the older desktop theme, updated with all new features except the colour palette. Other important changes include the addition of touchpad configuration options, improvements to the sound mixer and a significant change in default settings: edge binding are now turned off by default. For more details on this version, see
Of course, Mageia includes E's Econnman UI for the connman connection manager (if enabled - default is systemd-networkd.service with the Netapplet), along with four EFL-based applications: the Terminology terminal emulator, the Ephoto image viewer, the light-weight Rage video player and the Evisum system monitor. Ecrire, a basic EFL-based text editor, is also available as a recommends. Note that Ecrire's UI and font settings do not work properly with the m-Dimensions theme.
For those new to E, startup applications and processes (such as the Mageia Online Applet for update notifications) are not automatically picked up from
/etc/xdg/autostart
, but can be enabled at startup by going to
Main menu > Settings > Apps > Startup Applications
and adding the desired applications and system processes. Applications (only) to be loaded on restarting the DE are handled separately from a list available via
Main menu > Settings > Apps > Restart Applications
Enlightenment's system tray, which uses SNI appindicator notifications, is a separate module that must be loaded (
Main menu > Settings > Modules
) and added to a shelf (panel), where the Mageia Online Applet and Netapplet will be displayed (when enabled) along with others.
Currently, one issue has been observed: Restarting E sometimes results in a warning that the Efreet cache was not updated. In general, this can be ignored as it results from a time-out which still seems to be too short for some systems.
Light window managers
You can also keep your Mageia 9 installation even more lightweight, and we provide for this a plethora of small and efficient window managers. You can find afterstep, awesome, dwm, fluxbox, fvwm2, fvwm-crystal, fvwm3, i3, icewm, jwm, matchbox, openbox, pekwm, sugar, swm, and windowmaker. After installation, they appear in the login menu of your display manager.
IceWM
IceWM is installed by default as a backup desktop environment even if you select Plasma or GNOME in the installer. It is also present in all Live ISOs.
To launch it you select "icewm-session" in the login menu of your display manager.
Office apps
LibreOffice has been updated to 7.5. See
official release notes for 7.3
7.4
7.5
for details.
A new tool for off-line voice dictation has been packaged, based on Kaldi, Vosk, nerd-dictation and eloGraf.
Internet apps
Chromium-browser have moved to Tainted because of patent issues and we do not want to strip popular functionality ; please, do activate this repo if you want to use Chromium.
Firefox will be updated to 115 or later shortly after Mageia release (was too late for release freeze).
We added browsers for Gemini protocol: Lagrange (SDL), Kristall (Qt), Offpunk (CLI).
Wayland support
Both chromium-browser and Mozilla products (Firefox and Thunderbird) are built with Wayland support, but disabled by default. If you want to enable them, notably to workaround Firefox and Thunderbird resizing bug with XWayland, you can do it this way:
Firefox and Thunderbird
Just set
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
before starting Firefox or Thunderbird. The simpler is to add the following in you
~/.bashrc
or in a system-wide profile drop-in, e.g.
/etc/profile.d/90mozilla-wayland.sh
# Enable Wayland for Firefox and Thunderbird
if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" == "wayland" ]; then
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
fi
Chromium, Chrome and Teams
To set Chromium to use Wayland, you can do it via
chrome://flags
in the address bar and change “
Preferred Ozone platform
” entry from “
Default
” to “
Wayland
” or, even better, “
Auto
”.
Multimedia apps
Since the last patent expired in April, 2017, mp3 encoding is now available in the core media. Tainted media are still needed for H.264, H.265/HEVC and AAC encoding.
DisplayCAL is a tool to calibrate colours of a display using a sensor. It comes back as it has been ported to Python 3.
Blender for 3D animation is now in release 3.3.4.
Editors
Vim has been updated to 9.0
NeoVim 0.9.1 is also included
Games
In the Mageia community, our love for free software extends to open source games. A huge effort has been made during the Mageia 9 release cycle to package many new games, making Mageia 9 a very good platform for intensive and casual gamers alike. You can check the Mageia App DB to see a list of
available games
clicking on the category you like. Also see
Game environments
Education
Mageia 9 comes with gcompris-qt 3.3 which brings some new activities.
Software Development
Compilers and tools
Glibc has been updated to 2.36.
GCC has been updated to 12.3, GDB to 12.1 and Valgrind to 3.20.0.
LLVM has been updated to 15.0.
Firebird has been updated to 4.0.2
IPython has been updated to 8.10.
Most libraries were updated to recent stable versions (long-term support when available), such as Qt 5.15.7 and GTK+ 3.24.38.
GTK4 is also provided at version 4.10.3.
Tcl/Tk is at version 8.6.13.
Ocaml has been updated to 4.14.0.
Java stack has been updated to 17, java 8 and Java 11 are still available but are not the default.
Java latest provides the latest java not released. Currently Java 18.
Mono has been updated to 6.12.
The MinGW stack has been updated.
Virtualization
QEmu has been updated to 7.2.
libvirt has been updated to 9.1.0, virt-manager to 4.1.0, libguestfs to 1.49.
Some of libguestfs subpackages are now built from guestfs-tools 1.49.
Xen is at version 4.17.0.
VirtualBox
VirtualBox is at version 7.0.10.
Programming languages
Python 3 has been updated to 3.10.11.
Python 2 is being retired (most python2 modules have already been removed).
Perl has been updated to 5.36.
Ruby has been updated to 3.1.4.
Rust is at version 1.70.0. It will be updated during Mageia 9's support life to follow new developments.
PHP has been updated to 8.2, which gives a further performance improvement.
Qt libraries are available both in 5.15.17 and 6.4.1, with Python bindings through PyQt5, PyQt6, PySide2 and PySide6.
Server applications
Nextcloud
See
Nextcloud
Veyon
This application that lets you monitor and control a group of computers replaces
italc
. It is available in version 4.7.4.
Upgrading from Mageia 8
Upgrading from Mageia 8 is supported, and has been fine-tuned over the past few months.
Also see
How to choose the right Mageia upgrade method.
Note:
Please also read the Mageia 9 errata chapter
"Upgrade issues"
Preparations
Warning!
For installations & upgrades made in 2026.
We have to renew the gpg key used to sign rpm packages.
Please enable
remote repositories
or
update the system
, and select a custom mirror and be sure of
select one in good shape
Carefully read this document (Release Notes) and the
Errata
to see if there is something you need to prepare for.
Back up
any important data.
Advanced users
may have done changes that need to be reverted for problem free upgrade:
If
third party repositories
have been added, be sure to make a backup/copy of
/etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg
. The info in that backup can be used if you later need to re-add them. DO NOT just restore the third party repo lines in urpmi.cfg. The file contents and the matching files in /var/lib/urpmi will be created when the repo is re-added.
If any package names have been added to
/etc/urpmi/
skip.list
, remove them.
Disable
or remove all
debug and third party repositories
shown by
drakrpm-edit-media
MCC -> Software Management -> Configure media sources for install and update
).
64 bit system
must have any
32 bit development libraries uninstalled
. You can identify these by the word "devel" in the name. To know if your system houses such libraries you can use the command:
rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NVRA}\n" |grep i586 |grep devel
Remove packages
now not in configured repositories, shown by
urpmq --not-available
. They may be re-installed after the upgrade if needed.
Perform a normal full
system update
(most importantly rpm and urpmi)
Some software may need special care, such as maybe not update Docker during system upgrade, see
Docker
above.
It is good to
free some space
, particularly uninstall old kernels, fat games...
Make sure you have a
task-* package for your favourite desktop
installed. This ensures no needed packages for the desktop will be missing after the upgrade. Example:
task-plasma
. If you don't need full Plasma set it is
task-plasma-minimal
. Other desktops follow the same scheme, like
task-gnome, task-xfce
, etc, some have the "-minimal" variant too.
Not supported:
Upgrading directly from Mageia 7. (or earlier releases)
Using any of the Live images - due to the Live system being copied "as is" to the target system.
Upgrading a Mageia installation which was
NOT
in UEFI, towards a UEFI-mode.
- In these cases, you have to do a fresh installation. (Possibly keeping the
/home
directory.)
Online-Upgrade
The Mageia Update notification applet, Mageia Online,
will notify you
when a new Mageia release is available, and ask if you wish to upgrade. If you agree, the upgrade will be carried out from within your Mageia installation without any further steps being necessary.
If you have disabled the applet, or it is not automatically running for some reason, you can upgrade manually either using the GUI (
mgaonline
) or the CLI (
urpmi
dnf
). Each method is outlined below.
For any on-line upgrade method,
first:
Fully update your system and check you have enough free space before starting the upgrade. At least 2 GB, depending on your configuration - see Note and safe method at
Online-Upgrade, using urpmi (CLI)
below.
Reboot so you are sure latest updates of various system parts is in use and work - especially make sure you use latest kernel
( minimum 5.15.120-2 from updates or 6.0.8-3 from backport - for dkms to work,
mga#
31982
Ensure any screen lockers have been disabled.
Note:
Use a wired internet connection if possible, especially when you're using nonfree wlan drivers.
Online-Upgrade, using mgaonline (GUI)
The tool does not work with Wayland! If you use Wayland, logout and log in using Xorg.
Ensure any screen lockers have been disabled.
Use Mageia Online icon in the system tray to start the upgrade.
If it does not offer the upgrade:
Make sure that your system is fully up-to-date by
applying all available updates
In
Mageia Control Center - Software Management - Configure Updates Frequency
, make sure that the option
"Check for newer default releases"
is selected.
Look in your
/home
folder for a hidden directory,
.MgaOnline
. If there is a file
mgaonline
in that directory, then delete that file. After a reboot, the blue upgrade icon should appear when Mageia Online next checks for updates. If Mageia 8 has reached EOL, it will be orange and show a pop-up warning that Mageia 8 is no longer supported. Alternatively, you can launch the upgrade process by entering the following command in a terminal. It will notify you of the availability of the new Mageia 9 distribution, configure Mageia media sources and start the migration.
su -c 'mgaapplet-upgrade-helper --new_distro_version=9'
Online-Upgrade, using
urpmi
(CLI)
This method is useful when the root partition is encrypted as the booted system is already decrypting the partition. The best method for performing an upgrade is to use run-level 3 so that the X server and graphical environment is not running. Therefore, the upgrade should be cleaner using run-level 3 than using a terminal application as fewer programs are running which could potentially mess up the upgrade.
Run-level 3 can be enabled by appending "3" to the kernel command line by editing it at boot and to get then a login prompt. Another option is to use the command:
systemctl isolate multi-user.target
If you have dnf installed, you will have to stop the dnf makecache timer, because it causes a crash of urpmi when run during the upgrade (see
mga#
25072
). The commands are included below.
It is recommended to run "script upgrade_log.txt" before launching the next commands to capture the upgrade messages just in case a failure occurs. The messages will be written in
upgrade_log.txt
file. Use "exit" to quit out of "script".
Here are the general upgrade steps:
Become root in a terminal. All following commands must be executed as root:
$ su -
Make sure your actual system is fully updated:
urpmi --auto-update --auto --force
Disable dnf makecache (this step can be skipped when dnf is not installed):
systemctl stop dnf-makecache.service
systemctl stop dnf-makecache.timer && systemctl daemon-reload
Remove all of the existing media sources on your system:
urpmi.removemedia -a
Add the Mageia 9 online sources, either:
Using the MIRRORLIST method (which will select a mirror automatically based on your geographical location).
urpmi
knows what to substitute for $ARCH.
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist 'http://mirrors.mageia.org/api/mageia.9.$ARCH.list'
Or using a specific media mirror. You can get the mirror_url using the
Mageia mirrors web application
urpmi.addmedia --distrib
Finally start upgrading. It's recommended to run this command twice because in the first run some packages may be downloaded but not installed:
urpmi --auto-update --auto --force
Note:
It is often a good idea, when you have more than enough free disk space, to test the upgrade before carrying it out.
With this command:
urpmi --auto-update --auto --force --download-all --test
all the packages are downloaded and the 'upgrade' is only a simulation. This needs a lot of free space before starting the test - like more than 2GB free space on
/var
partition (
if you have no
/var
). (If you have several large desktops and many programs you may need more - if only a lightweight desktop, less.) If you have space on another partition, you can specify the destination of downloaded files by adding a path pointing to this partition after the
--download-all
keyword.
If the result is good, then upgrade for real with the command
urpmi --auto-update --auto --force --download-all
(same but without --test). Add also the path of downloaded files if specified previously.
If the result is not good, restore the Mageia 8 repositories with
urpmi.removemedia -a
and
urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist 'http://mirrors.mageia.org/api/mageia.8.$ARCH.list'
like above, and clean the cache by issuing
urpmi --clean
Online-Upgrade, using
DNF
(CLI)
If you're using (or now change to use) DNF for software management (configured appropriately per
our wiki page on using DNF
), you can upgrade Mageia in just a few steps.
Become root in a terminal. All following commands must be executed as root:
$ su -
Make sure your actual system is fully updated:
dnf upgrade --refresh
Install the system-upgrade plugin:
dnf install 'dnf-command(system-upgrade)'
Start download of Mageia 9 packages and check of possible conflicts:
dnf system-upgrade --releasever 9 download --allowerasing
This command asks for confirmation and tells the required disk space before starting the download. If you do not have what it says plus a couple of hundred MB free space on
/var
partition
(if
/var
is not separate but part of
partition, add another couple hundred MB)
, then either make enough space or add the option
--downloaddir path_to_directory_with_free_space
to this and the next system-upgrade commands. Also, if you have a separate
/boot
partition make sure it has space for adding
two
kernels. Also make sure
have additional room for the larger new programs. When you know all kinds of space is enough, say yes to let it download. It will also dry run a transaction test.
If downloading and transaction test succeeded, save your work and close applications!
The next command will immediately reboot your system!
Finally start the upgrade:
dnf system-upgrade reboot
Using the installer to Upgrade
You can use both the minimal Netinstall, and the big traditional (so, non-Live) DVD ISOs to do clean installs, but also to perform an upgrade.
DVD
contain a lot
of packages. Drawback:
no wifi
. (Due to lack of space and our wish to keep it free from proprietary drivers. Drives also would need to be loaded at boot to work.)
Netinstall
downloads everything
. The nonfree version contain a lot of drivers,
wifi is supported
That means that if wired ethernet is not available, you must use nonfree Netinstall for connecting using wifi, because updating need connection to repositories.
- See warning below.
If you have wired ethernet you can choose either, Netinstall or traditional DVD ISO. The DVD is larger in initial download, but less need be downloaded during upgrade.
Upgrading using the traditional DVD ISO
Follow
Preparations
above.
Take note on what repositories are enabled (and have been enabled and installed from any time!)
Make sure you have wired internet on the computer to upgrade! (Else use netinstaller instead, for wifi.)
Download the ISO from the Mageia
download page
and burn it on a DVD, or dump it on a USB stick. For more details, have a look at this
Available installation media article
Boot from the created media and make sure it booted in the same mode (legacy/BIOS or UEFI) as Mageia 8 was installed in.
Select "Install Mageia 9" from the GRUB (the bootloader) menu.
Select the
upgrade
option.
When at the
Media selection dialogue
, add the repositories as you noted down above. (Usually by selecting "Network (http)", Next.)
Warning!
Upgrades attempted without setting up the online repositories are not supported.
It is important that the online repositories be set up during the upgrade as the DVD ISO only includes a subset of the complete package set in Mageia online repositories, and:
You have probably over time installed software that is not on the ISO, only in the online repositories.
If you use important 32-bit packages in an otherwise 64-bit install, because the 64-bit ISO will only contain the 64-bit packages, the upgrade is likely to fail if you do not add online repositories.
By increased time after release is increasingly plausible that your system have received updates to later versions of software than that available on the ISO.
On the first reboot after upgrade, use the command '
urpmi --auto-update
' to make
sure
all packages were updated. In case of problems see
If upgrade failed
Upgrading using the Netinstall ISO
Follow the same instructions above as for traditional DVD installer, it is very similar.
Also see
Mageia Netinstall ISO
Upgrading an encrypted install
Using Netinstall or DVD ISO.
Firstly, on the running system to upgrade:
Remove unnecessary kernels, and big programs you do not need.
Perform a full update.
Make a note of which media are used, and have been used (Are any tainted enabled? If it is a 64-bit system, are any 32-bit media enabled?).
Make a note of which partitions are used, and their mount points.
Then prepare and boot the traditional installer as described above, and:
Select install, select language, accept the licence, select country, select keyboard, custom partitioning.
Click your encrypted partitions, select
Use
and enter your key.
If it is LVM a new tab containing the LV partitions appears.
Assign the mount points for all needed partitions except
swap
(as per your notes as above, or judge from partitions name, size, and type. Don't forget the
/boot
outside of the encrypted LVM!).
IMPORTANT: After clicking
Next
make sure to deselect formatting of all partitions! Or, if you want a fresh system but wish to keep user data: format
/boot
and any
/usr
/tmp
etc you might have, but NOT
/home
You should enable all media repositories (using your notes as above) corresponding to those used in your previous Mageia installation - except backports.
As with a nonencrypted install, it is recommended that the online repositories be set up, including relevant update repositories.
Known issues
User action needed
User actions needed that are not described elsewhere on this page nor in Errata.
Bugs
See the
Errata page
Bug reporting
We have a
bug tracker
. Before reporting any bugs, please read the
Errata
and also search the bug tracker to see if the issue is already reported. - If it is, then maybe you can add valuable information, or help testing a proposed update. To contribute, you need a Mageia account, which you can create at
. If you don't know, see
how to report a bug
You are also welcome to our
Forum
. For the development phase visit the section "Testing : Alpha, Beta, RC and Cauldron".
Packages removed from the distribution
Without removal on upgrade
The following packages have been removed from the distribution. They won't be affected by the upgrade process - they should continue to work on systems that had them before the upgrade, but won't receive any support. Moreover, they won't receive any updates, which means they are likely to get outdated from upstream versions first, and potentially get exposed to security issues second - if not already. You should probably switch to an upstream version, or a better maintained alternative but that's your own decision.
The category contains the following packages, alphabetically:
nrpe
mga#
26957
- Deprecated upstream.
QtWebkit
mga#
29326
- Unmaintained, security risk.
So we also removed applications that depend on QtWebkit:
cutemarked, quiterss, scudcloud, smtube, tomahawk-player, trojita.
Replaced on upgrade
ntp
is replaced with ntpsec,
mga#
28922
, for security. An alternative is to use chrony.
With removal on upgrade
The following packages have been removed from the distribution and marked as obsolete in the task-obsolete package: they will be removed by the upgrade process.
This category contains the following packages, alphabetically:
pgadmin4
: We recommend to use the upstream package.
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This page was last edited on 23 March 2026, at 01:10.
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