TLDR;
Wanted to move from Arch to something quite recent but less frequently (amount of packages) updating. Had not heard (or remember) about OpenMandriva, but did see Lunduke’s Youtube video and got interested, and now migrating to OpenMandriva ROME.
Long version:
My Linux history
For desktop I started with Slackware and Red Hat on 1990s (quite faint memories, I tried whatever was available and I was able to get my hardware to boot, but just don’t remember others than these two…). Moved to Debian on early 2000s, and had few years “side jump” to Apple’s OS X, and back to Debian and went with Debian all the way until 2012. Since 2012 I have been using Arch for desktops, with one year side step to Manjaro (well, it’s Arch just little different…) due to “native” ZFS support. I have been loving the minimalism and simplicity in Arch; install minimum bootable system and add Hyprland, Waybar, drun, some terminal, few browsers, Blender, FreeCAD, PrusaSlicer, GIMP and Steam, and I’m done 
For personal servers I used to prefer Debian, but these days mostly going with Ubuntu Server. At work my team and me run 220pcs of SUSE SLES for SAP applications (very similar to normal SLES, just special version for SAP) and few Ubuntu Servers.
I like to keep my desktop systems relative “clean”; I usually use virtual machines if I need to do some coding or use some of my server having needed development tools.
Why OpenMandriva?
I wanted to try something else for desktop as even in my minimal Arch systems there are hundreds of packages every few weeks when I reboot my machines. Also I have used Arch 13 years, kind of want to try something else. Even everyone cries about Arch being unstable; I have needed exactly once to boot from USB, chroot and fix broken system over last 13 years while having Arch in two desktops and 2-3 laptops. But also I have never installed 1000+1 AUR-packages (currently only yay and Thorium). Also even I love Hyprland I’ll need to wait few years and get back into it when it’s more stable - now it feels that every second time I reboot my computers I need to read some Github page and reconfigure something in Hyprland or relevant software (naturally on stable desktops e.g. XFCE I have not had any issues).
I have very little interest on downstream distros (e.g. Ubuntu, Manjaro, Garuda…) for desktop use. NixOS or Gentoo for desktop sounds really bad idea. And I don’t like Fedora, OpenSUSE or Solus, so I did have feeling like running out of options. I even considered BSD for desktop usage, but gaming (Steam) would not be feasible, and I doubt I would even get my 3D stuff working (Blender/FreeCAD/PrusaSlicer). Then I heard from Lunduke’s Youtube about OpenMandriva and I got really interested as it’s original distro, not downstream one. I of course know Mandrake, but for some odd reason I had not even heard about OpenMandriva, so I would remember. Anyways…I started to wonder if OpenMandriva ROME would be little less frequently updating/less packages to upgrade per month, but still new enough. Best way to find out is to test it, takes few years thou.
I have had minimal contact to Arch community, so I have been saved from all sort of woke nonsense. But I’m happy to hear that woke doesn’t live here. Maybe this even gets me interested getting more involved on 2026 when I’m done with large project, which is eating all my extra energy at the moment.
How it has been going this far?
I started OpenMandriva very cautiously with one laptop at beginning of January. I’m little surprised to hear people complaining about downloading process/finding ISO, I did find it very easy. Thou I would have preferred Plasma thin with Wayland, but Wayland was only available for non-thin version. I prefer Wayland version as in the past I have always suffered from screen tearing with X11. I have used KDE in the past, but not in last ~10 years, so it has been interesting to see how it has developed. Most of the things I have had change to try has worked as expected in OpenMandriva. Blender, FreeCAD etc. were new enough versions. Only thing I didn’t like this far was “bloat”; quite many applications like LibreOffice/Kwriter/etc. are installed by default, which I will never need. Luckily it seems those can be removed unlike Debian where you remove one desktop application it wants to remove whole desktop (or so it worked 15 years ago…). I would prefer approach from starting minimal and adding only the applications I actually need (=how I do Arch), but OpenMandriva way is also OK as there ain’t that much bloat in OpenMandriva. Also helps that KDE applications in general are not horrible. I find the oversimplified Gnome apps horrible [I do understand the appeal, I’m just not in the target audience…], KDE apps seems quite normal compared to those, even not as good as “normal” non-desktop specific applications. I have too little usage to “review” OpenMandriva yet, will need 2-4 years to form an opinion, which would have some actual merit.
I have now done 3 laptops and one desktop. All installations were easy and I didn’t experience any real problems. Now only my main desktop system needs OpenMandriva (still running Arch), but I’ll first have to figure out how I’m going to handle my photos, videos & documents which I have stored to ZFS-filesystem. I use heavily ZFS advanced features e.g. snapshots for incremental backups etc., so I need full rotation of backup disks from different physical locations before I want to even think about migration to BTFRS or other large changes. Only thing I know for sure that I don’t want to use again rolling release and ZFS; it has been quite painful with Arch as I always needed to wait ZFS-update so I can finally update my kernel. I’ll need to decide either to go to BTFRS (I don’t really like it…) or have dedicated ZFS-server. Both BSD or Ubuntu Server have good ZFS-support and don’t update frequently, either one of them would be good ZFS-server. I haven’t yet checked how OpenMandriva does ZFS. So some studying and decisions needed; so interesting but finding time to do everything is challenging.
