I removed a post from "mai". There is no need to hijack yet another thread for the useless ranting.
Installing SW to any Linux / Unix variant distro is easy when using the distro's servers. Installing a more recent version of SW is more demanding. It is not a Lazarus specific problem, it is true for any SW.
Debian and its derivatives are recommended by many. Yes, they are stable and good ... as long as you are happy with the outdated versions of programs found in their servers.
If not, then you may find 3rd party packages (like what we provide for Debian). If they work, good, but otherwise you must bypass their package system which breaks things very easily. I used to screw my Xubuntu system many times by installing a new version of something. Usually I was able to fix it but the struggle felt useless.
My personal recommendations for getting latest release of FPC / Lazarus:
1. Use a rolling distro. They have the latest versions of everything. I use Manjaro myself. It has an impressive selection of packages. FPC 3.0.4 and Lazarus 1.8 will be in their server a week or 2 after their release.
No problems so far with Manjaro.
2. For other distros, including Mageia, if no 3rd party package is available, you must bypass their package system.
A certainly functional way to install latest FPC is to use the install script provided by FPC project itself. A downside is that you cannot update it later by using the distro package system.
Then, Lazarus does not need installation really. Just get the sources, build and start it right there.
$ svn co
https://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/branches/fixes_1_8 lazarus_1_8
$ cd lazarus_1_8
$ make
$ ./lazarus
Easy peacy.