Downloads pages are very confusing for new users. They click on “Download” and are immediately brought to a page that is likely already confusing for them. It explains what Cooker and Spins are, and Server is self-explanatory, but it doesn’t explain what Rock and Rome are for besides “home and workstation editon” and “rolling”, which are vague for people that don’t know which one to choose. Below it there’s a download link for if they’re unsure, but they likely already went through the weeds before that point. Instead of what’s recommended for most if they’re unsure at the top of the page, there’s multiple links to click through to get to the information one at a time instead. They could easily click on the first link they see before reading the entire page first, and then it gets confusing with details like Wayland, X11, Slim… They won’t know one from the other, so they click around to hopefully find information that they can understand. Then comes the build list. Why are they on the same page? It doesn’t even explain where to click to download. How are they supposed to know to click the build number instead of what looks more like a download link on the right side? What does that build number mean? Again, if the recommended for most link was at the very top, this could easily be avoided, but having so much on the front page of the downloads is overwhelming for new users, especially with no immediate guidance at the very top of the downloads buttons. I think a good way to do it would be to have the recommended for most users links right under a brief explanation, and an alternative link below that for more specific/experienced users, that way they can immediately go to the starting point from the top. It could really use cleaning up for clarity. This can be confusing, even for more experienced users like myself. Thanks in advance.
I am not a marketing expert, and I don’t think OM has anyone that is a marketing expert.
The page is confusing in part because OM has a lot of options there that probably should be under an “Advanced users” tab or icon.
Would it be better if what new users and those new to OM saw was ROME + description and Rock + description and Advanced users? But then there will be arguments like “what about X11 vs Wayland”, “what about znver1”, “what about Gnome” and “what about slim”.
I would contend that the main Download page should feature one version of ROME, Rock, and maybe ROME Gnome, and Rock Gnome only which means we have to decide if we really are sticking to X11 as the main display manager and x86_64 as main arch. All the rest would be for Advanced users. Under Advanced users I would list everything, but under spins the description should include if you use these you need to be willing to fix things yourself or at the least file proper bug reports.
Also I mean sticking to X11 at this time, not necessarily forever.
If you have trouble downloading OMLx nightly builds from abf
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https://www.openmandriva.org/info-rock
https://www.openmandriva.org/info-rome
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So as @rugyada points out above the information is there.
OM does not have any paid employees to write things or to do anything else. We operate on a budget that would not cover one part-time employee. The contributor group is very small and we all run out of time to do everything we want to. For example if there were actually a custodian and lawn care person that person would be and unpaid volunteer. ![]()
None of this is unusual for an all volunteer organization where everyone is part time and unpaid.
How to get started? I would suggest getting to used to the organization and the people for a bit here in this forum and at the OM-Chat channels including the OM Cooker channel as well as the OpenMandriva channel. Then make a proposal. For example, “I would like to write or rewrite some of the web pages to do x, y, and z.” But keep in mind to do things like writing web pages you need some knowledge of how to write web pages and some specific knowledge of how OM writes web pages. The people that do that are at the OM-Chat channels. Make that proposal on the OM Cooker or OpenMandriva channel not in this forum.
Another thing people could do to get started is simply write some How To articles or Explanation articles in this forum and request that they be reviewed for adding to the Resources forum or the OM-wiki. There is some document somewhere here about that but I do not have time to look it up at the moment.

