Mageia is provided as ISO image files that have to be written to blank CD or DVD discs.
All ISOs can also be launched from a USB drive.

To dump a Mageia installation ISO on a USB stick, you may try one of several tools:

  • For Linux, IsoDumper, available inside repo. Or any tools based on dd. UNetbootin is not supported.
  • For Windows please have a look on our wiki for your options.

"Dumping" an image onto a flash device destroys any prior file-system in the partition; access to any data not destroyed will be lost, and partition capacity will be reduced to the image size. In other words, all prior data on the device is at risk.

If you have UEFI, a procedure is available in the wiki.

Wired Network-based Installation CD

Download quickly and immediately boot into install mode from wired network or a local disk.

Have a look in the wiki to get a list of possibilities.

Size of the ISOs is about 50MB.

LiveDVDs are not yet available. Classical Installation flavours is not yet available.

Network installer

Network installer, Free Software CD

Contain only free software

Network installer + nonfree firmware CD

Contain nonfree drivers needed for some disc controllers, some network cards, etc.

Supported Architecture

64 bit

Most new computers support x86-64 (also known as AMD64 and Intel64), but some laptop processors and netbook processors do not support it.

32 bit

This version runs on all PCs including those that support 64 Bit. If you have more than 3 GB of RAM you should prefer the 64 Bit version though.