A technical preview of the upcoming OpenMandriva Lx release is now available for testing.

OpenMandriva Lx ROME (Rolling) Technical Preview

Here is the Technical Preview of the upcoming OpenMandriva Lx ROME (Rolling), and after a few time also the 5.0 ’Rock’ snapshot

Installing Rolling is pretty much the same as installing Rock.

There is an auto updater tool in ABF (OpenMandriva Automated Build Farm) which has been kept turned off for longer that we anticipated so Rolling has not been getting many upgrades recently and has not really been ’rolling’. This is because developers have been making some big changes to tool-chain/system packages in the Cooker branch (where the upgrades come from) that would make it unsafe and unwise at this time.
After Rolling official released we will turn auto updater on again and we will have Rolling back to actually ’rolling’.
We believe now Cooker has reached the quality level we want to get in order to release a reliable system.

Some of the major changes:

- Python 3.11
- Java 20
- kernel 5.18.12 (clang kernel as default, with the option to install GCC kernel easily from the om-welcome module)
- The latest and brightest KDE products: KDE Frameworks 5.96.0, Plasma Desktop 5.25.3, KDE Gear 22.04.2
- A lot of software upgraded to latest version
- `usr merge`. This is a change in the file system organization. More about that  here. This change has been in the works in Linux for a little over 10 years. Some  other Linux distros have already made this change
- Support for installing on BTRFS and XFS file system has been restored
- dnf5 and zypper are available as alternative to default dnf4 package management
- Over a 31.343 (est.) bug fixes

To see a preview of what Rolling will become in a few weeks, users are invited to try these Cooker ISO images:

Download OpenMandriva Lx ROME (Rolling) Technical Preview
— At  SourceForge

Please keep in mind: never use Discover or dnfdragora to upgrade Rolling or Cooker since the command they use is only appropriate for Rock systems.
To perform full update after installation, open terminal and type:

sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf dsync

For a much better GUI package manager use  DnfDrake

It would be great if users could install the system on hardware and test them for a few weeks. Even those who cannot install on hardware, it would be very helpful to install in VirtualBox or just download and boot the ISO in Live mode and take a look at it. This would all be a great, great help.

Report impressions and issues  at the forum
See also
Any big issues should get a  bug report

Please note:

The ’Update channel’ set to Cooker. That means these ISOs use Cooker repositories for whatever period of time you test them.
Repositories should never be mixed.
To enable/disable additional repositories we have OpenMandriva own tool  Software Repository Selector (om-repo-picker).
You can read more about OpenMandriva Release Plan and Repositories, please visit:  https://wiki.openmandriva.org/en/doc/release-plan-and-repositories

You can  get in touch real time with our developers at IRC channel #openmandriva-cooker at Libera Chat and #openmandriva-cooker:matrix.org in matrix.

If you want to help the project and support OpenMandriva, please consider

  joining our team or making a  donation.

OpenMandriva Lx ROME (Rolling) Technical Preview – OpenMandriva