As with every release, the artwork for Mageia 7 comes from you, the great community that supports and makes Mageia possible. It’s time to start the process of getting Mageia 7 ready for release, updating all of the artwork and designs that will make it look great and unique. As in previous years, we’re looking for your contributions and ideas, but not just images and photos – if you have icons and logos, or ideas on how login screens or animations should look, then it’s time to discuss or show them off.

This release brings all of the updates and development that has gone into Mageia 6 together into fresh installation media, giving users a kernel that supports hardware released after Mageia 6. The new installations will benefit from the countless updates that current fully updated Mageia systems will have, allowing new installations to avoid the need for a large update post install. So if you are currently running an up to date Mageia 6 system, there is no need to reinstall Mageia 6.1 as you will already be running the same packages.

• Major updated packages for Lx 3

  Good news for OpenMandriva Lx 3 users. While OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 in on the way, we keep taking care of OMLx 3.03. Developers crisb, itchka, and TPG have made available a long list of updated packages just released to our updates repositories after the normal testing.

  Updated packages include Firefox 61.0.1, Thunderbird 52.9.0, Plasma 5.12.6, Quassel 0.12.5, Qt5 5.9.6, Libre Office 6.0.5, Mesa 18.1.3 and number of other updated KDE packages.

• While Waiting for OpenMandriva Lx 4, OpenMandriva Lx 3 Users Get Lots of Updates

  While waiting for the forthcoming OpenMandriva Lx 4 operating system series, users of the current OpenMandriva Lx 3 release have received numerous updated packages.

  The OpenMandriva development team announced over the weekend that a long list of updated packages await users of the OpenMandriva Lx 3 operating system series, which include the recently released KDE Plasma 5.12.6 LTS desktop environment and Mozilla Firefox 61.0.1 web browser.

  "Good news for OpenMandriva Lx 3 users. While OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 in on the way, we keep taking care of OMLx 3.03. Developers crisb, itchka, and TPG have made available a long list of updated packages just released to our updates repositories after the normal testing," reads the announcement.

Open source had a moral purpose when it was fighting "The Borg", Microsoft, in the 1990s, but then it fell from view. You could say it has found its mojo again, only this time it is about loosening the grip of companies built on ever more intrusive personal data processing: Google and Facebook. One of the biggest but most promising challenges is creating an Android free of Google's data-slurping.

Four years ago there were four mobile platforms, but since Microsoft and BlackBerry withdrew, it's a duopoly of Apple and Google.

The creation of a new third platform – a Google-free Android – now looks feasible, given the Great Unbundling the European Commission is likely to order. But someone has to build the damn thing – and it's going to be a mammoth task.