OpenMandriva Lx

Reader supplied reviews for OpenMandriva Lx Average rating 8.2 from 66 review(s) Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on OpenMandriva Lx? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- cooker24.125.04.34.24.14.03.032014.22013.0 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: cooker Rating: 9 Date: 2025-02-06 Votes: 8 So far so good thus I give it a 9 out of 10. The first thing is the out-of-the-box usability they've done for KDE. With many other distros when I've trieed them out for use of KDE, I found them to be limiting in being able to copy files to a FAT32 "non-removable" disk all down to the fact they've locked out the root account thus disabling the ability to sudo/su for edge cases. This makes edge-cases for us power-users very possible. This brings back the easier theming system as I just don't have time to sit there figuring out the theming intricacies of other DEs when I may often tweak some looks. This is great as now I can make my themes quickly and easily to mirror my femboyish attributes, which brings me onto a point: OenMandriva has explicitly distanced themselves from politics to put as much efforts as possible into making a working product, which going by their rolling distro (so between latest and cooker distro) and their cooker distros, is getting there very quickly for a team smaller than the bigger players. I feel very included by the distro's efforts because they've delivered whereas other distros make me feel like I'm being treated as irresponsible in the way they lock KDE down and I often find people like myself being used as a pawn in their infighting, often causing such massive reputation backlash to my community which ends up in us getting the blame for the actions of those claiming to be looking out for us. OpenMandriva by staying clear of such politics has made a distro that will help those of us who've been used as tropes by others. For one, I can finally use KDENLIVE!!! This means I can ditch the unactivated copy of Windows 10 as now I can edit videos for the first time in 6 years on Linux since that was also broken by KDE being broken on other distros for several years. Secondly, WINE seems to be working better already out of the box, I've still to experiment to get a working system to play some games like GTA 4, SR2 and a few other old classics, the rest I'm sure I can sort the Steam client app and Proton out to run. Audacity isn't broken either, whereas it was on my Debian install. No need to set up Pulseaudio as a secondary soundsystem yet. All the usual expected stuff is there out of the box and considering my first serious Linux distro was PCLinuxOS 2009 to get away from the impending end of XP support, I'm kinda going back to my roots by going with OpenMandriva as there's similarities genetically between the two. P.s. It's also quite usable if someone was a Windows Power-User who doesn't mind spending the tine to move over to a more freedom respecting operating system. For normie users, this distro maybe a bit too powerful for ya. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 24.12 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-02-06 Votes: 4 New users don't really care what desktop environment is used. They don't care what package manager is used. They just want a desktop that is easy and reliable, in productivity or entertainment. OpenMandriva provides that. It's rare to find a Linux distribution that's not based on Ubuntu, Debian, or Arch. That's not to say they don't exist, and OpenMandriva is independent. Mandrake the predecessor was a special take on Linux because it had one very important goal: make Linux easy to use for all, bit like what is Ubuntu's stance too. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 24.12 Rating: 3 Date: 2025-02-04 Votes: 0 So, let me state this loud and clear right out of the way: OpenMandriva Lx Rome is not prime-time ready. And if you thought you are in for some user-friendly and polished Linux experience, then be horribly disappointed. First hour, it crashed on me four times, yes FOUR freaking kernel panics in less than an hour; that in itself should be saying something to do with stability. But wait, there's more! The repos? Forget it. They are slow as syrup, and even when they actually load, half the stuff you try to install either fails to install or manages to break something else. Every time you run dnf update, it is like playing roulette. And, oh yeah, xdg-desktop-portal: that's totally hosed, meaning some basic functionality just plain does not work. Great. Then, of course, there's KDE. oh boy, where to begin? Bloat city, population: you. Even the "slim" version feels overweight, packed full of features you'll never use and none of the ones you do need. Missing settings here, broken apps there. what a mess. Unless you actually like trawling through forums and editing config files just to make your system usable, you're in for a world of hurt. And let me tell you something about usability: unless you are some sort of seasoned Linux veteran who can troubleshoot your way out of a paper bag, this distro will leave you stranded. So much is not properly configured out of the box that rookies and maybe even intermediates are in for a bad time. You'll spend more time fixing issues than actually getting things done. If you're looking for a solid, working rolling-release distribution, then keep away from OpenMandriva Lx Rome and head to openSUSE Tumbleweed: rock solid, no drama with multiple DEs/WMs, and fast, dependable mirrors. You won't also waste hours trying to fix what shouldn't break in the first place. In short, unless you’ve got the patience of a saint and the skills of a wizard, give OpenMandriva Lx Rome a wide berth. Your sanity will thank you. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 66 reader reviews of OpenMandriva Lx...