Fedora to OM?

Other Ask OpenMandriva
1

Been daily driving Fedora now for about 2 years.

Considering moving to OM. What are the Pro’s & Con’s of moving over from Fedora?

Considerations:
I’m not a Minecraft person but my 7 y/o is and wants me to setup an account for her. That means I’d also have to set it up on my laptop in order to play with her. I’d end up installing OM on the old Toshiba Satellite we’ve repurposed for her to have as her first computer (current has F43 on it).

I was a CompSci student while I was in school (before life got in the way and I had to leave school and go get a job). I’ve been playing with Java and trying to learn Swing and some JavaFX. Any OM strengths or weaknesses here?

As a side note - I’ve got my wife willing to try out linux and she’s occasionally using a profile I setup for her on my F43 laptop. Neither of us are Gnome types as that desktop menu system is a bit of a turn-off for both of us. Both of us like the old school menus like in Win98, etc and my F43 is running Plasma.

I’d like to met people who can help me grow as a programmer and am interested in finding forums on OM to put me in contact with other programmers. What’s available here?

Thanks!

”The old 19K-Tanker who’s been parked (retired) and is now rusting away in the motorpool.”

2

Welcome to the forum.

Pros & Cons is a little subjective. I can discuss the difference.

  • We use sudo dnf dsync –refresh to update our releases. Things like autoremoves for package clean up are not advised. Using sudo dnf reinstall kernel-<flavor> will kill your box.
  • Our stable release (Rock) will have newer packages than most distros, including Fedora.
  • We don’t want X11 to go extinct, nor do we want the long established ecosystem around it to go extinct. We recently added TDE to our ROME and Cooker repos to reaffirm that, and give people the long used UX of the Win9x and similar days.
  • We are an independent distro with direct lineage to Mandrake Linux. Which means a lot of the same technologies you would use in RH/Fedora are still mostly used here.

Now to get to the fun part. We have Java 24, as well as several other versions required to bootstrap Java. It will be up to you what version you want to settle on. It would be nice to have more testers and curators for the Java packages, if that interests you. This means the Java version of Minecraft should work. I don’t know if Bedrock is available for Linux, but a better alternative in our repos is Luanti (formerly Minetest). There is a mod that you can get that is essentially a clone of MC, but the engine is written in C languages with the Lua scripting language.

Depending on the direction you want to go with development, we have a Development Topic on the forum, and we have the Cooker chat room on Matrix. The former is more centered around generic development, but there are some sub topics specific to OMLx development, and the latter is dedicated to development of OMLx exclusively. Both would be a good way to meet other programmers.

3

Hello and welcome to OpenMandriva forums.

I cannot speak much to coding or programming, but I can about minecraft.

Most of the time I have no issues setting that up on any distro at all since I use Flatpak packages, which are available literally everywhere.

While you can use the official launcher for Minecraft, there are alternative launchers available through Flatpak like PolyMC for the Java version of the game, and MCPE launcher for the Bedrock edition. MCPE is Minecraft Pocket Edition, which is the same as the Windows 10 version which uses C code and not Java. It should run without issues.

Those are safe and I use them since forever, but you could get an .rpm package from some other system and try using that, but I do not recommend that nor can I guarantee it will work.

4

Things like autoremoves for package clean up are not advised.
If I’ve had to remove packages before I either did it in the Discover software center or used dnf uninstall commands. Good to know.

Most of my package activities center around just running sudo dnf update or upgrade. If I install something I do try to stick with command line installs with dnf, but that really depends on what I’m trying to do.Using sudo dnf reinstall kernel- will kill your box.I guess it’s a good thing I’ve never messed around with the kernel in linux, and so have not done any of that before.

Our stable release (Rock) will have newer packages than most distros, including Fedora.
Sounds good to me!

We don’t want X11 to go extinct, nor do we want the long established ecosystem around it to go extinct.
After getting into fedora I read a little about wayland. I’m not saying it’s bad, but I am admitting to being a little bit of a stick in the mud - I prefer older methods. And as such, will be interested in using X11.

We recently added TDE to our ROME and Cooker repos to reaffirm that, and give people the long used UX of the Win9x and similar days.
I’d somehow missed Trinity. Thanks for the pointer! Looking at pictures of it, I like that one a lot! Pretty sure my wife will like too! Thank you!

It would be nice to have more testers and curators for the Java packages, if that interests you.
I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to be a contributor of any significance, but if that’s a means to gain experience and knowledge I’m willing to give it a go.

This means the Java version of Minecraft should work. I don’t know if Bedrock is available for Linux, but a better alternative in our repos is Luanti (formerly Minetest). There is a mod that you can get that is essentially a clone of MC, but the engine is written in C languages with the Lua scripting language.
Thanks for the info!

Depending on the direction you want to go with development, we have a Topic on the forum, and we have the Cooker chat room on Matrix. The former is more centered around generic development, but there are some sub topics specific to OMLx development, and the latter is dedicated to development of OMLx exclusively. Both would be a good way to meet other programmers.
I will definitely cruise around over there! Thanks for the info!

Thank you so much for the help and info!

God Bless!

5

While that might be available with minimal support for update/grade, it’s really not advised. There is an application called System Update that is the preferred method of updating.

6

Most of the time I have no issues setting that up on any distro at all since I use Flatpak packages, which are available literally everywhere.
Good to know about the flatpaks! Thank you!

While you can use the official launcher for Minecraft, there are alternative launchers available through Flatpak like PolyMC for the Java version of the game, and MCPE launcher for the Bedrock edition. MCPE is Minecraft Pocket Edition, which is the same as the Windows 10 version which uses C code and not Java. It should run without issues.
Awesome! Thanks! I’ll probably give the PolyMC a look first. I’ve not had any luck with trying to log in with the microskunk account on my daughter’s laptop. Seems MS doesn’t like linux very much - or I’m doing something wrong, which is very likely.

Those are safe and I use them since forever, but you could get an .rpm package from some other system and try using that, but I do not recommend that nor can I guarantee it will work.
Thanks for the info and help!

God Bless!

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