The OpenMandriva team has announced the general availability of OpenMandriva Lx ROME, their rolling-release edition of this independently developed GNU/Linux distribution descendant from Mandriva Linux. This distribution is aimed at bleeding-edge users who want to have the latest and greatest GNU/Linux technologies without upgrading or reinstalling.
OpenMandriva Lx ROME is a unique and independent distribution, not based on any other Linux distribution. A direct descendant of Mandriva Linux, it was the first Linux distribution to utilize the LLVM compiler. This release continues to use the entire LLVM toolchain, which completes the work that began in 2015, even before Android switched its compilers.
Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.1 kernel series (Clang-compiled, of course), OpenMandriva’s rolling-release edition is available in two spins featuring the popular KDE Plasma and GNOME desktop environments. The Plasma spin comes with the KDE Plasma 5.26.4 desktop environment, which is accompanied by the KDE Frameworks 5.101 and KDE Gear 22.12 software suites, modified to handle the new JPEG-XL file format. On the other hand, the GNOME spin features the latest GNOME 43.2 desktop environment on top of Wayland.
The distribution also features OpenMandriva’s unique in-house built tools, such as OM Welcome, OM Control Center, Repository Selector (repo-picker), Update Configuration (om-update-config), and Desktop Presets (om-feeling-like), along with popular apps like LibreOffice, Chromium, Falkon, Krita, VLC Media Player, SMPlayer, and digiKam.
Zypper and dnf5 are available in the repositories as alternative package managers if you want to install more apps or manage pre-installed ones. However, the developers warn that one should never use Plasma Discover or dnfdragora to upgrade the distribution.
OpenMandriva Lx ROME is available for download now from the official website or by clicking on the direct download links. Only 64-bit systems are supported at the moment, but AArch64 (ARM64) images should also be available shortly. If you’re looking for a rolling-release distribution that offers the latest and greatest technologies, OpenMandriva Lx ROME is definitely worth checking out.
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