How To edit repositories for your OMLx system (Plasma or LXQt)

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All posts updated 2025-05-18

Do not ever use Discover, dnfdragora, or Gnome Software to add or remove repositories. Discover and Gnome Software use packagekit which does not do this correctly for OMLx repositories, they will break your repos every time. If you use OMLx Plasma desktop or LXQt then you use Software Repository Selector aka om-repo-picker only.

The following applies to 'Official Release" of OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 and after. (This is not related to OM Lx 3 at all.) Current OMLx releases are Cooker(cooker) (development branch), ROME(rolling) a slow rolling release, and Rock(rock) a point release that gets only security and bug fix upgrades between the releases. The name in parenthesis are the actual repository names for each branch. Current Rock version is 6.0.

If you are at all in doubt ask questions in the Support forum first.

The easiest way for user to do this is with the ‘Software Repository Selector’ located in Application Launcher>System.

Rock example (your choices may be different):

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ROME example (your choices may be different):

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Basic rules to follow:

  1. If you install Rock use only rock repos. If you install ROME use only rolling repos. Otherwise you will get incompatible library packages installed and break your system.

  2. Unless you are a tester or QA-Team member you also want to leave "Enable (testing) repositories unchecked. (Packages in testing repos can sometimes break your system, though this is easy to fix by reverting/downgrading to previous package.)

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The sharper minds out there will have noticed that in addition to the “Rock” Update Channel discussed above there are also Update Channels called “cooker”, “rolling”, and “rock”. These are repository files for the different OpenMandriva releases which follows a 3-tiered release model. Brief description is:

Cooker - Cooker is and always has been the development branch or Mandrake/Mandriva/OpenMandriva. It is where developers work. It is highly experimental (on purpose) and Cooker is not stable. Cooker is used by developers, package maintainers, testers, and other contributors. It is recommened of a user uses Cooker to also have a partition with a stable (ROME or Rock) system for production work.

Rolling - Is a new concept where OM developers at some point move latest Cooker packages to a rolling release we call ROME. It is for users that want the latest and greatest packages. ROME is generally very stable but any LInux release that gets frequent software upgrades may have a problem from time to time.

Rock/Stable - Stable is the point (point in time) release of OpenMandriva. Rock is Stable but the difference is that the Rock repo files are designed to automatically upgrade user when there is a new stable release. Using OMLx 6.0 as an example since it is current. If you use “release” repos you will always have packages and updates from the 6.0 repository. If however you enable Rock instead today you will get packages from the 6.0 repository but when OMLx 6.1 (and subsequent) release happens you will be automatically switched to 6.1 repositories and automatically upgraded to 6.1 if you use the command sudo dnf dsync --allowerasing --refresh.

The work flow model for OpenMandriva packages might help make things more clear

Cooker>Rolling>Rock/Stable

That is packages go from Cooker to Rolling to Rock. Packages do not go the other way. Thus newest packages=most problems=least stable more used/developed/tested packages=least problems=most stable. However users and testers generally report both ROME and Rock to be stable systems.

The two most important things about OMLx Releases are:

  1. Don’t mix them. If you use “rock” use “rock” only. Same for “rolling”, and “cooker”. Pick one and use that one only always.

  2. You can upgrade your system up to the next branch, for example from Rock>ROME(rolling) or ROME(rolling)>Cooker. It is not recommended to downgrade you OMLx system, for example don’t go from ROME to Rock or Cooker to ROME. If you downgrade and have problems do a fresh install you won’t want to try to fix that.

If you have problems open a new thread in Support forum with a descriptive title and all relevant information. Remember for someone to help you they need to know exactly what you did. We can not fix “It’s broke”.

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If you find a mistake I made just send me a PM and I’ll correct it.

If users encounter any issues with this do not post here. Please open a new topic with a descriptive title in the ‘Support’ forum and detailed description of what you were trying to do and what you have done to try to correct the problem.

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If you do what is shown here and don’t know what you are doing you can unleash all manner of havoc and bad things upon your OpenMandriva system. Know what you are doing first.

If you are at all in doubt ask questions in the Support forum first.

There is a way to edit repo files with Dolphin/Kwrite (or Kate if you prefer). Let’s see if this can be described in pictures.

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There is another quick way to do this from command line (Using x86_64 Rock system as an example):

Note (2025-05-18): These instructions are for dnf4 which is currently in use in ROME(rolling) and Rock. In Cooker we have now dnf5. These instructions may need to change for dnf5.

To enable main repository (should be already enabled by default):

$ sudo dnf config-manager --enable rock-x86_64 rock-updates-x86_64

To enable extra repository (extra repo includes community maintained and unmaintained packages, at lot work but some do not):

$ sudo dnf config-manager --enable rock-x86_64-extra rock-updates-x86_64-extra

To enable restricted repository (some packages in this repository may be illegal in some countries so be careful):

$ sudo dnf config-manager --enable rock-x86_64-restricted rock-updates-x86_64-restricted

To enable non-free repository (closed source code so we can’t fix anything inside these packages):

$ sudo dnf config-manager --enable rock-x86_64-non-free rock-updates-x86_64-non-free

If you wish to disable any repo substitute the option --disable for --enable. With the above example you should be able to extrapolate the commands to enable or disable anything you wish for any version. (Hint if you wish substitute either release, rolling, or cooker for rock.) (For different arch substitute znver1 for x86_64.)

And this is extremely, ultra, majorly, important. Do not mix the repository versions. If you pick Rock use Rock only. Same for Release, Rolling, and Cooker.