It has been more than a year since the last stable release of Mageia Linux distribution as the upcoming Mageia version 8 is still under development and inching closer to its stable build slow and steady.
However, as the year 2020 is about to end, Mageia team has finally announced the second beta build of the next Mageia 8. The latest Beta 2 includes updates to packages, Kernel, Java, and the graphical stack, and the base system upgrade.
Among the major package update, this is what Mageia 8 Beta 2 comes with:
- Linux Kernel 5.9.12
- Systemd 246
- Glibc 2.32
- GCC 10.2.1, LLVM 10.0.1
- RPM 4.16.1
- Chromium 87 (x86_64-only)
- Firefox 78.5 (ESR)
- LibreOffice 7.0.4
- Plasma 5.20.4
- GNOME 3.38.1
- Cinnamon 4.8.2
- Xfce 4.15.2
- Mate 1.24
- PHP 8.0
- Java 11, Python 3.8.5, Rust 1.48.0, Ruby 2.7.2
Furthermore, Mageia no longer supports Java 8 (still available) and hence updated the Java stack to version 11. Subsequently, it has updated applications to the ported Java version 11 and removed others that have never been ported.
Since the Mageia 8 has already surpassed its previous estimated final release date (18 September), here’s the revised development schedule for the Mageia 8.
| Stage | Estimated Release Date | Public | Released On |
| Alpha 1 | 13 June 2020 | Developers and packagers | 26 June |
| Beta 1 | 27 June 2020 | Developers and packagers | 3 August |
| Beta 2 | 11 July 2020 | Developers and packagers | 12 December |
| Versions Freeze | 4 January 2021 | ||
| Release Candidate 1 | 11-17 January 2021 | ||
| Release Freeze | 17 January 2021 | ||
| Final Release | End of January 2021 | Developers, anyone |
If you want to keep track of all new features coming in for Mageia 8, check out its official release notes.
At last, if you want to test the Mageia 8 Beta 2, grab the torrent file or direct ISO image of pre-release from here. As usual, the images are available for both the 32-bit (with Xfce) and 64-bit (with Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce) systems.
