The second beta version of Mageia 8 has been released.

Mageia 8 in beta2

We are happy to announce the release of Mageia 8 Beta 2. After a  long time since the beta 1, we look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts so that we can continue to get Mageia 8 ready for release.As we said in a previous post, a lot of work had to be done for the basesystem upgrade, java, kernel, and the graphical stack. These upgrades are now in a state that allows for the Beta 2 ISO’s to be built and tested.

Here are some of the major packages included in this release:

• Kernel – 5.9.12 (5.10 will land in a short term)
• glibc – 2.32
• gcc – 10.2.1
• 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 is provided in release 8.0. As this one is very recent, some applications using it are not yet ready for it.

A full list of included packages is available in the .idx file for the classical installation media or the .lst file for the live iso images.

For those that want to jump in and test straight away,  the images can be downloaded here, as always with pre-release images, use your best judgement.

The set of available ISO images is the same as in Mageia 7, offering installation media for both 32 and 64 bit systems, 64bit live images for Plasma, GNOME and Xfce, as well as a 32bit live image for Xfce. Some of the major improvements in ISO are that our netinstall can now be used to install over WIFI connections with WPA encryption. Previously, only WEP encryption was available.

We hope that the release works well for you, but if there are issues please report them to  our Bugzilla so that we can get around to sorting them for release. If you want to get involved in ISO testing, packaging or any other aspect of Mageia, there is  lots of information here.

A huge hand to all of the people involved with getting this release out of the door, and to all of the testers for giving us the feedback that we need to get Mageia 8 ready.

8 in beta2