Select and use ISOs

Media

Definition

Here, a medium (plural: media) is an ISO image file that allows you to install and/or update Mageia and by extension any physical support the ISO file is copied to.

You can find them here.

Classical installation media

Common features

  • These ISOs use the traditional installer called drakx.

  • They are able to make a clean install or an update from previous releases.

DVD

  • Different media for architecture 32 or 64 bits.

  • Some tools are available in the Welcome screen: Rescue System, Memory Test, Hardware Detection Tool.

  • Each DVD contains many available desktop environments and languages.

  • You'll be given the choice during the installation to add non free software.

DVD dual arch

  • Both architectures are present on the same medium, the choice is made automatically according to the detected CPU.

  • Uses Xfce desktop only.

  • Not all languages are available. (be, bg, ca, de, en, es, fr, it, mk, pl, pt, ru, sv, uk) TO BE CHECKED!

  • It contains non free software.

Live media

Common features

  • Can be used to preview the distribution without installing it on a HDD, and optionally install Mageia on to your HDD.

  • Each ISO contains only one desktop environment (KDE or GNOME).

  • Different media for 32 or 64 bit architectures.

  • Live ISOs can only be used to create clean installations, they cannot be used to upgrade from previous releases.

  • They contain non free software.

Live CD KDE

  • KDE desktop environment only.

  • English language only.

  • 32 bit only.

Live CD GNOME

  • GNOME desktop environment only.

  • English language only.

  • 32 bit only.

Live DVD KDE

  • KDE desktop environment only.

  • All languages are present.

  • Different media for 32 or 64 bit architectures.

Live DVD GNOME

  • GNOME desktop environment only.

  • All languages are present.

  • Different media for 32 or 64 bit architectures.

Boot-only CD media

Common features

  • Each one is a small image that contains no more than that which is needed to start the drakx installer and find drakx-installer-stage2 and other packages that are needed to continue and complete the install. These packages may be on the PC hard disk, on a local drive, on a local network or on the Internet.

  • These media are very light (less than 100 MB) and are convenient when bandwidth is too low to download a full DVD, a PC without a DVD drive or a PC that can't boot from a USB stick.

  • Different media for 32 or 64 bit architectures.

  • English language only.

boot.iso

  • Contains only free software, for those people who refuse to use non-free software.

boot-nonfree.iso

  • Contains non-free software (mostly drivers, codecs...) for people who need it.

Downloading and Checking Media

Downloading

Once you have chosen your ISO file, you can download it using either http or BitTorrent. In both cases, a window gives you some information, such as the mirror in use and the possibility to change if the bandwidth is to low. If http is chosen, you may also see something like

md5sum and sha1sum are tools to check the ISO integrity. Use only one of them. Both hexadecimal numbers have been calculated by an algorithm from the file to be downloaded. When you ask these algorithms to recalculate this number from your downloaded file, either you have the same number and your downloaded file is correct, or the number is different and you have a failure. A failure infers that you should retry the download.Then this window appears:

Check the radio button Save File.

Checking the downloaded media integrity

Open a console, no need to be root, and:

- To use md5sum, type: [sam@localhost]$ md5sum path/to/the/image/file.iso.

- To use sha1sum, type: [sam@localhost]$ sha1sum path/to/the/image/file.iso.

and compare the obtained number on your computer (you may have to wait for a while) with the number given by Mageia. Example:

Burn or dump the ISO

The checked ISO can now be burned to a CD or DVD or dumped to a USB stick. These operations are not a simple copy and aim to make a boot-able medium.

Burning the ISO to a CD/DVD

Use whatever burner you wish but ensure the burning device is set correctly to burn an image, burn data or files is not correct. There is more information in the Mageia wiki.

Dump the ISO to a USB stick

All Mageia ISOs are hybrids, which means you can 'dump' them to a USB stick and then use it to boot and install the system.

[Warning]

"dumping" an image onto a flash device destroys any previous file-system on the device; any other data will be lost and the partition capacity will be reduced to the image size.

To recover the original capacity, you must re-format the USB stick.

Using Mageia

You can use a graphical tool like IsoDumper

You can also use the dd tool in a console:

  1. Open a console

  2. Become root with the command su - (don't forget the final '-' )

  3. Plug your USB stick (do not mount it, this also means do not open any application or file manager that could access or read it)

  4. Enter the command fdisk -l

  5. Find the device name for your USB stick (by its size), for example /dev/sdb in the screenshot above, it is a 8Go USB stick.

  6. Enter the command: # dd if=path/to/the/ISO/file of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

    Where X=your device name eg: /dev/sdc

    Example: # dd if=/home/user/Downloads/Mageia-4-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

  7. Enter the command: # sync

  8. Unplug your USB stick, it is done

Using Windows

You could try:

- Rufus

- Win32 Disk Imager

Mageia Installation

This step is detailed in the Mageia documentation.

More information is available in the Mageia wiki.