Frustrating

[alframe (Alex Furer)]

BIG FAT WARNBING: take this with a grain of salt… But new users will be turned off in a heartbeat, if they experience the same as I just did.

I finally came around to testing OpenMandriva on a live USB stick (not even tried to install it yet…) and I have to ask: Do you guys want anyone to use this???

From the main page of OpenMandriva I clicked on Download → ROCK → OMLx 6.0 Plasma → OMLx 6.0 Plasma AMD CPU (newer than 2017), which forwarded me to abf.openmandirva.org/platforms/6.0/products/224

There’s a tag “Product”. When I click on it → nothing.

So I thought I have to register, which I did. Unfortunately I never go the Email I NEED to confirm, to be able to download… I tried several “lost my password” sing and dances. Nothing. Never ever got any emails about my lost password, nor the initial confirmation mail. Yes, I checked the SPAM folder!

OK, I thought, must be a glitch in the matrix. So I went back to the home page. Clicked the big green button “Download Now”, to end up having a download speed that reminded me of a 56 kb modem from 30 years ago. Not to mention that I felt like I was downloading some porn from alt/porn on a shady bbs…

I just tried it again, and it’s a bit faster. Good, we advanced by a decade in internet speed. Pfweeeeehhhhh!

I browsed the “Mirror download (sourceforge)” as well and there’s quite a selection, which to me, as a new Linux user, said absolutely nothing. I know, I know, RTFM. Then I saw yet again a green button “Download Latest Version”. Nice.

So I continue with the “Get Started” procedure.

The ISO verification sounds close to something I need to compile. A link to a tool that can verify my ISO would really help there. “To check the integrity of your local ISO file, generate its md5sum and sha256sum and compare with the checksum provided.” is not helpful…

So I turn to Brave AI and asked it how I can verify a downloaded ISO and generate the md5sum, or sha256sum. Oh, it’s built into Windows. Got it. Now I have the hash (not the good stuff, the one with many numbers), but where can I compare my result? No link, no explanation… How about putting the MD5 and the SHA 256 has right there, where it asks to compare it to.

Oh, there’s a sha256sums file on SourceForge. Click to download → nothing… Try again. After 4 or so countdowns on SourcForge it downloads a file. No extension, so I right click, open in notepad++. Cool! Now we’re getting somewhere.

Comparing the list with my result. Darn, pressing the big fat green download button on the front page defaults to the X86_64 download. I am on AMD. I Need the znver1, or better yet the znver5.

Back to SourceForge, now I am more knowledgeable, I can do this (“It’s a Unix system! I know this!” Jurassic Park).

Consulting Brave AI about Wayland vs X11. It told me to go with X11 for my AMD 9950X and my Geforce 4090. Yeah, I know, OpenMandriva will probably not work with my rig. Still, I am not giving up. I am not that green goblin in that crane machine that goes “The claaaaaaaw” when Windows is reaching for me. I want this to work.

On SurceForge I see the counter that shows only 9 downloads, for the znver1 x11. Ouch…

Still, I am in this for the long run.

Downloading the correct iso and sha256 tested it. All good. We’re getting somewhere.

I have Balena Etcher on my system, from testing Pop!_OS. But adding links to your page takes 30 seconds guys!

So I used balenaEtcher to create the Live USB stick. It ran through with no issues.

Rebooted my machine, pressed F11 (Asrock board) and saw… Windows Boot Manager. Nothing more to select from. When booting with the POP!_OS USB, it showed me the Windows Boot Manager and the ISO I inserted.

There must be something wrong here. So I intended to start from scratch. Unfortunately, I could not format my entire stick again, because there’s a OPENMDVASS partition I can’t get rid off to start over.

Now I am low level formatting my USB, with 5% completed (the time it took me to write this).

I am entirely sure that I did something wrong. But bottom line, I got POP!_OS up and running within an hour. Now I am tinkering with OpenMadriva for about 3 hours.

Hence: Do you guys want anyone to use this OS, or is it like the art where the artists throws a bucket of paint at a wall and every body goes “Woaaaaaah - excellent” and I go “WTF”, then they call me ignorant and not intelligent enough to understand the “Art of the moment”. Just that your bank account doesn’t get filled up with millions of Doubloons, like the artists bank account. You will be dependent on people like me to get up and running fast (should not take 3 hours and a broken USB stick…), or OpenMandriva will be shelved as unusable.

Sorry for this rant and harsh truth. And again, I am sure I did something wrong.

Unless…

[alframe (Alex Furer)]

Update: I managed to get a verified USB live stick with OpenMnadriva on it.

After tinkering with my BIOS, had to set USB detection to legacy only, I saw the OpenMandriva startup screen. I selected English (US) on language and keyboard (yes I am running English OS and keyboard, despite being in Switzerland).

After hitting Enter, I shortly saw an OpenMandriva startup screen on all my three monitors, then, black screen.

Waited for 5 minutes. Nothing.

I will (maybe) give it another try and unplug two of my monitors and try to get it up and running again. But as it stands now, I am frustrated, having lost 4 hours with no tangible result…

And I guess I would probably have to actually install OpenMandriva, to even get to the point where I can try to get the Nvidia stuff rolling.

This is a non-starter for me.

[secretfirefox]

Hi, alframe. I am not the administration, so I will comment as an user.

I am sorry you had such a troubling experience.

When I first tried to switch to omv, I had some initial difficulty in getting to download the ISO. But that went away quickly. Yes, I did have to take the longer route, so to speak. More like, have patience for the iso to download from the website, after I found it. Worked great through normal dd flashing to my usb stick. Booted and installed normally. No issues.

I agree it would be nicer if the download was faster, but I am in no position to comment on how to get that done, or what it would take for that to be done, and how much it would cost, the last part being really important, I imagine.

As for nvidia, yeah. It has always been terrible on Linux, now it is kind of okay, especially if you don’t have a laptop with prime technology to switch between dedicated and integrated graphics. I notice that LTS distros are better for nvidia, since the kernel, mesa and the nvidia driver don’t have to change a lot. I, however, ever only used nvidia with a single monitor setup. One would imagine that things should just be plug and play, no matter how many monitors are going, but that isn’t the case for linux in general. Even for windows, to be fair. I think we take a lot of stuff for granted in a way, but it takes some to get to that point. Yes, I know we just want stuff to work as regular users, but the linux world itself has similar issues, not only omv. Did the three monitor setup work well under Pop!_OS? If so, I suppose that would be the best bet for you now.

I understand today that in order to use Linux I must be okay with things not working the way I usually have them work, because it normally happens to be that way. When things do work as I expect, that is when it is special. In such cases, I imagine a lot has been done to get to that point. For instance, nvidia doesn’t release their source code for running the gpus so people cannot make drivers that are open-source licensed, which means those cannot make it to be in the kernel by default, which means not being plug and play. Not so with (most) amd chips, because amd does release the necessary code. For this reason, people have reverse engineered a driver called nouveau, which has way less capabilities, but it should at least help you to get it up and running up to the point where you can then install the proprietary drivers, once the distro is installed and working.

I understand it feels like getting through hoops and the like, but it is a different operational system, of which OMV is yet again different than most, so there will be bumps on the road. I wish I had an nvidia card and more monitors to test it out on my end, but I sadly cannot. Wish you best of luck.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

@alframe sorry you encountered problems.

Regarding iso download speed, OpenMandriva has no control of the servers at SourceForge, that is SourceForge. I can tell from experience because I test a lot of isos that download speeds from ABF vary quite a bit. We are using donated servers, for which we are greatful. (Thanks to Ampere and OSUOSL.)

For benefit of all users:

@alframe

From the main page of OpenMandriva I clicked on Download → ROCK → OMLx 6.0 Plasma → OMLx 6.0 Plasma AMD CPU (newer than 2017), which forwarded me to abf.openmandirva.org/platforms/6.0/products/224

That is showing ISO # 3895 which was built and published April 22, 2025. Had you clicked on 3895 you would have gotten to:

For checking checksums to verify iso integity there is this:

Checking checksums to verify integrity of OMLx .iso files

There is nothing difficult about this, the first time someone does this it may take a minute or two to read and a minute or two to do.

It is hoped that new users encountering difficulties ask us first. We are happy to walk you through problems. It is important to understand you are using something that is different. You may need to look at things differently and ask those questions first.

It may be worth mentioning that everyone, including developers, involved with OpenMandriva is an unpaid, part-time, volunteer donating their time, knowledge, resources, and money.

[alframe (Alex Furer)]

Thank you for understanding and your insights.

First off: I understand that there will be hoops to jump through. I also understand that Nvidia is asshole, when it comes to open source, or anything near this. That said, there have been commits to the Nouveau driver from folks at Nvidia. So this might actually change in the future.

Plus, slow downloads are ok. But not getting the file downloaded from abf.openmandriva.org kinda made my eyebrows rise. Not getting the confirmation mail and not getting any password reset mails is another ball game entirely. OK, probably the password reset did not trigger, because I was never a confirmed user.

Catch 22.

I think that OpenMandriva could become much more user friendly, if the intro wasn’t that botched up. Like add some links here and there. Post the hash (puff puff) on the actual page, maybe a fold down menu. Make sure that there’s a X86 and AMD downloads available. Add a little text that reminds people of what they’re looking at.

Minimal basic things that resemble an open minded community, which welcomes new people.

Don’t get me wrong. I was welcomed well on the forum and I got a lot of advice. But there might be people that don’t post in the forum first. And even so, I ran into issues I should not have run into at all.

What I was hoping, is that I get to a point where I could start overcoming those hoops. Try to solve the monitor setup et. all. and then move on to apps, mouse drivers and tablet drivers etc.

But I never go to that point. On the PC I got black screens and on the laptop some warnings that this is not supported (at least!).

Yes, Pop!_OS just worked. Even on my HP Envy Laptop RTX 2080 and integrated GPU.

So yeah, I’ll keep an eye on OpenMandriva for sure. As the other distros are currently self destroying with their racist, bigoted and sexist world views (which they claim to be the opposite of).

Let’s hope that the 76 in System 76 has a tangent to 1776! While they tie their new desktop environment to rust… sigh… There’s no winning anymore. Just unsustainable bullshit!

Cheers!

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

FWIW I just checked links here and there are isos for all the entries under Rock. ROME and Cooker still have a few links for Plasma5 that have no isos. That is because Plasma5 is EOL (dead) so those links should be removed. I’ll pass this along to OM Contributor group.

[alframe (Alex Furer)]

Thanks @ben79 !

But registering and logging in should work out of the box. The only thing left for me is to check my mail server log and potentially white list the om domain.

But 99% of people will not, can’t do that, or most likely don’t know what I just said.

I will walk my dog. Sleep on it and maybe try again.

But also, I will have much pain to replace Photoshop (35 years of muscle memory to overcome), Lightroom (thousands of photos to migrate), and figure a new compositing and video editing suite. And Audio… Not to mention color accuracy with my Eizo monitor (ok, I can calibrate on Windows and move the profile over. I even got an install from Eizo for Linux, hence tinkering). Or search for another tool that supports my x-Rite). And then CMYK, which seems a big problem on Linux, but mandatory for printing.

I need to get work done on my OS. I am ok to tinkering. I am a nerd inside out. Basically a Siggraph pioneer (unlisted, but contributed back in ‘96).

But I need a good base to stand on and so far OpenMandriva denied me that base.

Cheers!

[secretfirefox]

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, this may actually change. I do look at this with some degree of skepticism because of how nvidia has been in the past, and how they are only releasing portions of the code now since there was a leak not too long ago…

I see what you mean, but I don’t understand why you seemed to have the need to register in order to make the downloads. I never had to register in order to get myself and ISO. I just did as @ben79 mentioned in his post, and boom, ISO on my ~/Downloads folder.

While I don’t disagree some stuff could be more obvious, perhaps painfully obvious, I don’t think it is currently hidden or anything like that. It does take more clicks, some searching, perhaps some asking on the forum, for sure. Again, it would be nice if there was an website with its own server for hosting the ISOs, with really Pop!-level user friendliness for even calculating hash code (something which frankly I never do since my internet is decent, or otherwise use torrents), but again, how it’s done and how much it costs is not my area of expertise.

I am happy that you are doing what you are doing now, posting on the forum to seek for help. If more people did that, it would be great. Cannot figure out what people need if they don’t reach.

Happy to hear Pop!_OS just worked. For OMV, I would first try getting the distro installed with one monitor, then plug more after installation. Ever for other distros, really. I once had issues with the distros loading in one monitor, and the installer being on another monitor which I had plugged but not used, and I was forever looking for an installer that was right there… (Pop!_OS, by the way, a few years back)

I think that, despite minor things here and there, OMV is the most future proof distro, in the sense that the devs won’t shoot themselves on the foot with all the rust nonsense. It’s even creeping into APT now, and breaking stuff wherever it goes. You have no idea how glad I was when I found out a software I need runs on OMV (though previously it didn’t) and I no longer need to resort to APT-based distros. I can safely ditch anything non-omv for good now.

Please take a deep breath, have some rest, and try again later when you can!

Best wishes,

Fox

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

@alframe

But registering and logging in should work out of the box. The only thing left for me is to check my mail server log and potentially white list the om domain.

If you are talking about registering an account at ABF, no it does not work that way because of spamming. You need to go to OpenMandriva Cooker Chat and ask berolinux or alexander to send a confirmation email. ABF accounts are for developers and package maintainers. One does not need an account to download isos or software from ABF.

Why are things this way? Resources are a factor:

As you can see people here do listen to user experiences and we do try to improve things as we can when we can. But €53 per week is a limiting factor just as time is. A small group of all volunteer people can only do so much in a short time. We have learned since 2013 that over a long time we can do a lot.

The biggest positive change I can imagine is changing the ratio of people actually doing vs. those telling “you should, ect”. The actual doers are few. Like about 12 part-time, unpaid, volunteers. If one or two have work, family, or health problems that has a big impact and so forth.

I am not trying to ask for sympathy, alibi, or excuse, this is just the reality of OpenMandriva Linux.

[vannax (Mike)]

@ben79

The actual doers are few. Like about 12 part-time, unpaid, volunteers.

The fact that OML can compete (and IMHO out-compete) such giants as Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian, as far as user experience is concerned, is a testament to the skills and dedication of that small team.

I remain very impressed.

[rugyada]

@alframe

From the main page of OpenMandriva I clicked on Download → ROCK → OMLx 6.0 Plasma → OMLx 6.0 Plasma AMD CPU (newer than 2017), which forwarded me to abf.openmandirva.org/platforms/6.0/products/224

There’s a tag “Product”. When I click on it → nothing.

,.,.

Also:

→ If you have trouble downloading OMLx nightly builds from abf

[vannax (Mike)]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think that using Linux in general, and OML in particular is akin to driving certain vehicles.

If you just want a few built-in bells and whistles that you can get into the car and use, Windows it is. Kinda like cars. If you want to soup up the engine, get 0-60 in 3 seconds, or tow loads, Linux is the way to go. IMHO, OMLx is not “marketed” towards the people who just want to get in and drive, it is meant for folk who want a luxury experience and at the same time wanting the ability to, say, add 4-barrel carbs to their car, or change the gear ratio of their differential.

OMLx makes it as easy as possible for this to happen, but if all you want is a Kia, well…tough luck.

[LeeTalbert]

@vannax

but if all you want is a Kia, well…tough luck.

I disagree. The om-welcome app gives the non-tech-savvy users a graphical interface to manage their system without having to learn scary terminal commands. And even without configuring anything special, OM provides a very clean and accessible plasma desktop that almost anyone can navigate, especially when all most users want is a file browser and a web browser.

OpenMandriva is the best of both worlds.

[vannax (Mike)]

@LeeTalbert

And even without configuring anything special, OM provides a very clean and accessible plasma desktop that almost anyone can navigate, especially when all most users want is a file browser and a web browser.

This is what I call a luxury experience.

I stand by my opinion.

[LeeTalbert]

@LeeTalbert

And even without configuring anything special, OM provides a very clean and accessible plasma desktop that almost anyone can navigate

Luxury for the masses, a 2005 Toyota Corolla for everyone.

[stephane]

check this point for install UEFI

Installing on ssd drive

[alframe (Alex Furer)]

My mistake was to not read that the ID is the place to click. My bad. Maybe putting “product id” in bold would help ignorant idiots like me.

I then clicked on the product name and nothing happened. Didn’t even occur to me that I could click the ID. RTFM. My bad…

I searched “problems downloading”, “download not working” and “download” on the forum. The topic you linked did not come up. Should imho.

I did scroll through the BIUG FAT WARNING, again, missed that one. My bad.

But I would not go for a nightly build, if I knew that the when I click through from: home → Download (yeah, I want to download) → Rock (yeah, I want stable) → List you screenshotted → AMD (because I have an AMD), that I would land with the nightly builds.

@ben79 Because I did not read the note about clicking the product ID (counterintuitive) and now download started, I started registering. And when someone registers, it could trigger an automatic answer, that the confirmation mail will be sent out manually, not just zero reply. Include a link to the Cooker.

Missing the download from Source Forge was probably my oversight, again, but I thought I knew what I wanted and making the correct selection, which is offered to me, was the obvious path for me to go down. And I think the UI of the page intends one to do this.

Opening a download directly, through the SourceForge link triggered my pop-up alert. Sorry…

Imho, the path for downloading should be the same in any case. I feel that it would be good if the links from ROCK, ROME, Cooker etc. would lead directly to the release, or add a step in-between to make it abundantly clear what one is about to download.

Or perhaps make it it something like this:

I think that would have eliminated my confusion and ignorance towards reading. When I browse through it now, with all the advice given in this thread, I can see the logic you setup. While I still wonder why the nightly on abf.mandriva… is April 22. and the one on SourceForge (under nightly), is June 15., June 14. respectively. But I am probably missing something here.

If I landed here, when following “Get Started” button, the I would have probably downloaded The file under “ROME” tbh, which is old. Maybe I would have realized that and seen that the date on 6.0 is newer.

On that note, another recommendation, if I may dare, I would completely remove this from here:

“There’s to many paths that lead to too many different Rome’s here”

Feel free to ignore me But I guess (hope) more people like me will pop up in here and experience a steep learning curve as I currently am. I am merely trying to ease that curve a tad.

As for the money side of things. I see that. It’s nothing! If I had, I would donate. I just cancelled Adobe, well, reduced it to PS and LR, so I might have a few bucks in a fes months. Thing is, I kinda got sick and tired of working for useless clients on websites they don’t know what to put on them, that take for ever to pay, after the project is done. So I picked up the “research” task of switching to Linux and dropping Micro$oft, Google, et. al., get away from Abobe and started to invest time local AI image generation. I have been digging deep into coding with AI, released a couple of ComfyUI nodes in the progress and put together a production ready workflow, which I intend to release and document. Mostly for myself, as a manual, I don’t have any hopes. But it is draining my non existent reserves.

That said, what I can donate is time. So if there’s things to do, in terms of web, or rendering (3D & AI), let me know, we can talk about it.

Thank you all

P.S. I will reboot now with only one monitor connected and report back

[alframe (Alex Furer)]

All I want, to start with, is being able to install it. Or at least test drive it, using a live USB.

I am not reluctant towards driving different cars. That’s not the issue here.

And yeah, I’d stick with Windows tbh, if we’d have Windows 7 for ever, without any built in AI and being forced to use a M$ account. I am not against AI, at least not anymore, if you are, well, tough luck, it’s not gonna go away. More so, that was a main reason to switch to Linux. Local AI is working well on Linux and it’s not being butt-sniffed by Billy Boy all day long…

But throwing away 26 years of experience down the drain, is not something I anticipated to have to do, when closing in on 60 years old…

[vannax (Mike)]

@alframe

And yeah, I’d stick with Windows tbh

Alrighty then.

[alframe (Alex Furer)]

Posting this running OpenMandriva from my USB stick with one monitor attached.

Noice!

Good night!