@encw it may for this you need to talk to OM developers at OM-Chat. I am definitely not discounting the merit of what you say. I think adding GPG key is a good idea and this may be the time to do that. But that is a decision above my pay grade ($0).
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Well someone would need to have time to do that. The problem, as I keep saying, is lot of people saying what should be done few people doing things, though that may be on a significant upswing. And I am not complaining this is human nature.
I will start a thread on this, but at some point someone needs to write a how to. I can think of a lot of how toās we need.
Posting this to show resources we do have. I have posted this template about 47 times this week.
Welcome to OpenMandriva and our forum. This forum is for users of OpenMandriva Linux operating systems.
OpenMandriva Forums are primarily users helping other users.
You are welcome to talk to our developers at OpenMandriva Chat.
Users with a problem need to read How to get better results when posting about problems before reporting any issue or problem. The article is not too long and Do Read.
When a new user has an issue please look in the documentation for OMLx. OpenMandriva wiki, Forum Resources guide and the āSearchā function of the forum.
If you donāt find what you are looking for, try an Internet search. One can find out a lot from documentation or forum posts at other Linux distros. If user finds something written for another distro but you have some doubt ask at OpenMandriva Chat.
For serious technical issues and package/feature requests please file a bug report here.
Note: We are a small group. All the contributors and developers here are unpaid volunteers.
You can make OpenMandriva grow and improve by getting involved
Any help with testing would be appreciated whether one is technically proficient or a very non-technical user. The more people and more hardware we can get involved the better we can make OMLx releases and packaging. We do a lot of testing in VMās as well. Developers tend to use Qemu, most user level testers use VirtualBox.
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Maybe instead of a thread on this:
And helping users on this forum and in the OpenMandriva Chat channel would be a big help.
What about GNOME slim spin? Iāve seen there is a dedicated build for it but no images available. Would be very nice if there was one, as default GNOME spin is almost 3 GiB in size and filled with many unnecessary (i.e. LibreOffice) or straight up useless apps (i.e. default GNOME games).
Yes, itā in our loooooooooooong to-do list 
PS>
Reason why itās not done yet is that I donāt know the gnome desktop so I need help.
There is a topic somewhere where we started to talk about what to remove from full gnome iso but have to admit we did not have the time to expand more.
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I know Arch, so I will start a minimal Arch VM and see what the bare minimum is needed for a vanilla GNOME desktop. Iāll come back with a package list in a couple of weeks and, hopefully, it translates well over to OpenMandriva.
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@LeeTalbert Great!
Warning this maybe a bit long but i want to respond to a number of things in this thread. But first, thankyou @ben79 and @rugyada for your hard work and patients with all of who are new here (experienced and non experienced linux users) and to all the openmandriva team what you have achieved so far us truly great with such a small team and so little funding. I imagine that this influx of new users must be a least a tittle overwheming.
Whilst openmandriva is not a young distro, because of all the mentioned limitations it isnāt all that mature either, thats not a critisism just an obsevation. However I do hope that with more support and funding we can get it there. Iāve been using linux for 7 or 8 years now for all my computing, and have installed and played with most of the major distros. For a while I have wanted to get more involved with something but feel masively under qualified. I know that I can use rome and report bugs but would also be interested in testing prerelease as well. OpenMandriva QA looks interesting and after looking at the docs this seems like something i could participate in. However, looking at the events shedual there dosnt seem to have been any meetings since 2019. I assume there has been other activity but iām not sure how to follow this. Currently i have mint still installed but am using rome for all my work but i would have no problems installing cooker aswell for testing purposes. But as the info seems out of date iām not sure how to proceed. Also is this somthing that can be learnt as you go or would i need previous experience doing this kind of thing? The other advantage of doing this is I would definately learn and understand the inner workings OM better, making me better equiped to participate in the forum.
Thist is actually very important. I donāt know how big the OM commuity was even just a couple of weeks ago but it seems to have grown signifacantly in the last few days. This means that before most of the common goals and objectives were probably pretty well understood by most eveyone so most people new what was working and what wasnāt. The thing is now there are new users trying to install OM for the first time, stugleing to find isos and comming across ones that donāt work, this isnāt just confusing but also frustating, for both the new users and for the old guard trying to help them get going in the right direction. Again well done on posts like this and āWhat a new user needs to know after installingā and others like it. but with so many new posts ant topics it is getting harder to find the information needed in the forum. I imagine that there are already conversations happening about how to improve the OM.org website and i know this takes manpower and time But i think if the first page of the web site presented very clearly what are Romeplasmax-11 and rockplasma and why you would choose one or the other with download links that then download the one chosen that would be easier for new users especially new linux users but also makes it very clear this is the main focus for devopement. It would also help prevent new users stumbling across uot of date or broken spin isos. In the meantime Those of us that have figured things out need to help with pionting people in the right direction.
This underscores the piont about the goals and focus of the OM project being much more clealy stated. From what i can gather most of the new users here came bacause of the values of the OM project as a whole and not the technical features of the distro. For those whom the values are the most important, that means you may need to live without certain features or find workarounds as no distro can be perfect for every user. For some users OM will never be a perfect distibution, in reality no distro ever is. What happens is we spend enough time with the quirks and itricacies that we get comfortable and just live with them.
Well thats the end of my ramblings, thanks again to all the team. i am definately sticking around to see where this project goes. Until now, when helping family, friends and colleagues transition to linux I have always installed or recommended linuxmint but i hope eventually to have the knowlege and confidence to offer OpenMandriva instead.
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I would argue the distro is mature, maybe the services (forum, wiki aso.) are not yet but can be improved with the help of feedbacks and suggestions.
Before this awesome storm of newcomers basically all the old users attending the forum knew how to Search the forum, download nightly builds from abf, which are the most important topics to follow, etc. because we did grow up together.
As for contributing with testing, until now we have mainly relied on internal testers, developers of course, and some aficionados common users who provide positive feedbacks and/or reporting malfunctioning when they upgrade system, install new packages, etc.
We are resurrecting the QA category with the purpose to make better profitable use of it.
The team will make a new post or review the one already in place soon and try to answer to all your questions on how to contribute with testing.
Also we are publishing more informations ([1] and not only) as soon as we realize itās necessary to know for newcomers.
The point is to make them as simple as possible although easily understandable.
Weād like very much to make all perfect, but as you know nothing/nobody is perfect.
Working on it 
Those of us that have figured things out need to help with pionting people in the right direction
Yes, that would be very helpful. So far the excellent @ben79, some developers with quick incursions at the forum to better clarify some more technical bits, and me have been sufficient to manage the forum however that may well be not enough nowadays 
Thank you.
Addendum:
Usually the candidate releases links/ID numbers are shared in the cooker channel of matrix.
This may change now, we can publish them also in the QA category for anyone wishing to test.
Good input! Thank you 