We have been covering Mageia from its early days. We published an exclusive interview of the team prior to the launch of its first stable release. We are glad to share with you that the team is now working on streamlining its release cycle -- good news for users and developers.

The team has decided that that the release cycle for Mageia will be 9 months. "We think it’s a well-balanced choice, providing an up-to-date distribution that’s also stable. It should also give us enough time to build the specifications,  develop, package, innovate and finalize it," posts ennael in a blog.

Each version will be supported for 18 months. The team is also considering a release of LTS (Long Term Support) version, which will be released every 18 months and will be supported for 3 years, just like Ubuntu.

Here is the release cycle for Mageia 2

• Alpha 1 : 16/11/2011
• Alpha 2 : 14/12/2011
• Beta 1 : 20/01/2012
• Versions freeze : 06/02/2012
• Artwork freeze: 10/02/2012
• i18n freeze: 10/02/2012
• Beta 2 : 14/02/2012
• Releases freeze : 06/03/2012
• RC : 09/03/2012
• Final Release: 04/04/2012