Mageia 6 "Sta1" Release Ships, Finally Switches To GRUB2

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mageia 6 "Sta1" Release Ships, Finally Switches To GRUB2

Days after OpenMandriva Lx 3 Beta 2 shipped, Mageia with its common lineage from Mandrake/Mandriva has shipped Mageia 6 "sta1" as their first stabilization snapshot...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mageia-6-Sta1-Released

[xpris]

I have a suggestion to make a benchmark distribution Mageia 6 dev and OpenMandriva LX 3 beta with others.
Why?
Because this is an exciting distribution, but usually overlooked in tests.
Another thing, OpenMandriva from years, as the only distro uses Clang LLVM compiler.
Additionally, it uses its own kernels, which at least in theory, to ensure greater efficiency:

OpenMandriva Lx uses the latest stable kernel, 4.6.2, by default.
An even more current version, 4.7-rc3, is available in the repositories (kernel-desktop-rc-latest package) for people who want to test upcoming releases and/or who have hardware not yet supported in the stable release.
OpenMandriva Lx also features kernel 4.1.18 nrJQL – a powerful variant of the 4.1.18 kernel that has been configured with desktop system performance, responsiveness, and realtime capabilities, in mind.
The new NRJ mode adds CPU and RCU full Preemption and Boost mode, the QL mode adds patchsets which combine to provide further optimisations, including BFS CPU task scheduler, BFQ disk I/O scheduler, UKSM memory management, TOI for suspension and hibernation.
This kernel version is enabled with kernel keys necessary to use the “EDID ovverride” feature, with this we should be able to override an incorrect screen EDID with boot time options, we have included EDIDBINS in the ISOs, a package containing 5 basic firmwares for the most common resolutions so that users may force different resolutions than the ones detected automatically by X.
The CONFIG_ACPI_CUSTOM_DSDT key allows loading of a customised acpi table. Details will be found on our Wiki in the kernel pages.
Highlight:
HT/SMT NICE feature added and enabled by default for a better responsiveness and realtime behaviour on all PC with HT (Hyper-Thread), improving performance of foreground applications at the expense of background ones.
Your desktop / gui / applications will remain fast even if you run folding@home, mprime, seti@home etc.
A more effective and precise control on the nice levels of server apps for its proper balancing and tuneups.
Please, see: https://wiki.openmandriva.org/en/Kernel for more information.

So it seems that OpenMandriva from few editions uses special kernels, similar to those released by NeteXt'73 whose performance turns out to be better than others: http://www.dobreprogramy.pl/Cala-pra...ews,59826.html
( source in Polish language)

So is any chance to benchmark this smillar distros even in betas version? I mean Mageia 6 vs OpenMandriva LX 3 vs other maybe Ubuntu 16.04? Is possible? Or maybe you can try Netext'73 premium (paid and free) kernels for Ubuntu? This is also nice idea for benchmark, I think.

[pete910]

Been waiting on this

[kozaki]

I have Mageia6 "sta1" on test for two weeks. Foss versions have upgraded, with e.g. kernel-4.7rc7, Plasma 5.7.1 or Mate desktop 1.14.1.
ANd I made some boot time + responsiveness RL testing with default and « cleaned » daemons (results available [1] )

About xpris suggestion don't forget this distribution is optimized for ease of use and security *by default* (and as easily tweaked as before it entered systemd ). Also while I'm in no way a kernel specialist, Mandriva/Mageia have had custom kernels for a long, long time thanks to developers like Thomas Backlünd. E.g. Mandriva kernel team reorganization [1] or back in 2006 « Atleast that was the problem back when I started to build *tmb* kernels... » [2]. Dunno whether Thomas Backlünd is still part of the Mageia kernel team these days. All I know is that kernel-tmb-desktop is still being developed and available in the repos.

[1]: https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11202
[2]: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux...tch=kernel+tmb