Im new, hi, where do I start?

[CataclysmicGentleman]

hello!

as the title says, I am new and had a few questions.

I am presently using omarchy, I have hopped from fedora (major update broke my system) to try many others, other distros either didnt work (like POP_OS) had major unfixable issues with drivers and such (sigh NVIDIA) but once I landed on Linux Mint, I was “home” and it worked very well for me. I used mint for about 3~4 years. Recently I have seen politics affect the linux world in a very saddening way- (I wont go into details)

I stopped using mint because it became too constricting, I reached a ceiling, I wanted to learn more and pick my own desktop environment and pick all the apps I use one by one and such.

A podcast I watch recommended a few different distros, Omarchy, Devuan, and OpenMandriva, I am presently on Omarchy, but would love to try Open Mandriva, however I want to use i3/dwm (or something similar), rofi.

Omarchy doesnt really let me pick what I use (its shipped with hyprland) nor does mint, is it possible to install OpenMandriva but without kde, and to use xlibre with i3 or etc? is there a minimal install?

like I want the solid foundation of Open Mandriva, I dont wanna build the base, or maintain my own system (security and kernel and otherwise) I just wanna pick my environment and apps.

thanks!

[SomeDudeInAZ]

Welcome

Looks like you followed a trajectory like many of us. I’ve been on mint since 19. I originally came here because I wanted to learn about KDE, and a Lunduke video said they use it (so why the hell not try it?).

@CataclysmicGentleman

I stopped using mint because it became too constricting, I reached a ceiling, I wanted to learn more and pick my own desktop environment and pick all the apps I use one by one and such.

OMA most definitely will run i3 - in fact here’s a recent forum post on how to do exactly that:

How to install i3 on OpenMandriva Lx ROCK

Introduction This post will instruct you on how to install the i3 window manager on OpenMandriva Lx ROCK 6.0. This post makes these certain assumptions: You’ve just installed ROCK 6.0 Have the Plasma or Plasma “Slim” desktop installed as per the available .iso files distributed on the OpenMandriva website Wish to remove Plasma completely Are connected to the internet You wish to use startx as your de-facto display manager (startx) Methods Here, you are going to do the following: Switc…

For everything that you want to do here is my STRONG (albeit unsolicited advice )

Remember ROCK is the LTS version, ROME is rolling (shambling/shuffling really) and cooker is testing/dev. In Mint terms, if Rock is version 20.3, Rome is version 22.0, cooker is 23 with the bleeding edge.

1. RTFF: READ the Freakin Forum!

2. Install a copy of ROCK (the LTS version) somewhere (another partition, another computer, etc) so you can (full KDE or plasma slim) get used to OM. Unlike mint, OM will not hold your hand. OpenMandriva is a different kind of cat. You will learn much more about linux than you thought (and all that without having to keep recompiling your kernel ). Plus package names are different.

3. Ask for help - people who know MUCH more than me are all over the place helping out.

4. Join the Matrix chat

Then when you’re ready, grab a server image, or one of the the Rock/Rome plasma slim isos, stuff it in a VM and play. Then go bare metal.

I know the goal here is to move everything over to XLibre and adding other compatible DEs and WMs. But I don’t remember if it’s fully enabled in Rome yet. I know it’s in Cooker.

Hope this helps. Guaranteed I messed something up here but hopefully I didn’t send you too far astray. Like I said, there are many people smarter than me here.

PS: If you don’t have a copy of foxclone go get it. When you’re experimenting / building it is often faster to restore a partition image than figure out what went wrong. Or (better yet) figure it out, then restore the image and do it right “the first time”.