Lunduke Journal - Linux Distro Declared “Non-Woke”, Causing New Users & Interest to Skyrocket
Lunduke reported that 23% of user accounts were created within the last two weeks!
OM is growing fast…
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This is just counting forum users. There is no telling how many people have migrated to OM without getting on the forum.
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That’s always the fun thing with Linux. It’s really hard to tell how many users there actually are. I for one like it that way.
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The thing is, growth is good, as long as it translates into donations and contributions of expertise and time.
A distro that focuses on the hardware and software of the distro is the only way for the distro to be really good. That this has been OM’s focus for so long is why I am having such great success with it.
There are no shortcuts to excellence. And developing software costs money no matter how you do it. Because of this the best way to support OM outside of directly contributing to the development effort is to give them money if you can. Let’s ensure that OM has a bright bright future with many years of padding in funding.
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I agree. Think about all the money we waste on dumb stuff every month scrolling Amazon/AliExpress/Temu (guilty as charged). Instead, kick a few bucks over to the OMA Team and show them you want to support the good work they’re doing.
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exactly! i get more out of OMLx than I do out of Temu, Amazon, etc. too!
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I agree to an extent, but I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to immediately start the conversation with “money? money money?” because that will put people off. The best thing that OM can do is show the value they provide and with all the extra users installing and using the software it’ll start to get more ‘battle tested’ and truely become a major player in the scene. Additionally the more buzz there is around the distribution the more spotlight that’s on it, there may even be the option of corporate sponsorships.
One of the things I think that they could also look at is something like a patreon with a “supporter” flair on the forums, or some merch (for example OpenSUSE with their Chameleon mascot, that would make adorable merch) that they could use for development (it’s easier to justify spending some money when you get something in return). Additionally I like the way that KDE does their donation prompt, it’s once a year and can easily be declined, perhaps something like that is worth looking into.
So far I mostly agree with the comments people have suggested about it being pretty easy to use, but I’m still testing for a bit to see if it’ll replace my OpenSUSE install as I still have some reservations and some minor things to see if I can either resolve or get used to.
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Donations aren’t always about money. Besides, if you donate your time you choose how it’s spent. Your money, not so much. That is something all projects need more of. Time and knowledge. Sadly, the crowd you are talking about that is turned off by money didn’t last very long when they could dish out but not take criticism. They don’t donate time, either.
Most of these things are on our website, including the sponsors:
The problem with all of the well known foundations and projects is the wrong corporate sponsors. Even so, I think the Association likes moving the project in the direction they want without money telling them what to do.
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One myth of open source software is that because you can use it for free that means that it was and is developed for free. There is no such thing as free development. Software engineers need to eat and a place to live. Software is the real hard part of technology as evidenced by history. Great hardware is ALWAYS hobbled by bad software. And software is hard. Very hard.
The wash out rate in computer science majors at universities around the world are continually very high.
So when I say make a donation, I am very much talking about money. Incentivize other talented engineers to pick up the call as more than a passing moment. This leads to reinforcements and stability.
The reason I have never contributed to open source projects with my own skills, outside of a lack of time, is this entitled mindset. If you don’t have money, you don’t have to feel bad about that. Contribute bug reports, and help others use the software. These are all very valuable things that can be donated. But just as a plant without water dies, and water can come from MANY sources, so does a software project without a solid source of proverbial water.
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I donated a bit of money, but I am too poor to do much. On the other hand, I am recently retired and I can donate my time, which hopefully will be worth much more.
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Sort of agree.
We are shy when it comes to ask for money donations…
To me it would look like the sole purpose is to make money, that’s everything but that 
BUT…
a handful of more money surely will help.
We count that current donations may cover 2/3 years paid of rented server for website and the likes, for example.
Another important goal would be to raise enough money to buy a new box to replace an old one at Bero’s house with a new, better performing one to connect it to abf builders.
That said, we have a Get involved page here, and at the wiki too. As already mentioned, donations are not just money but you can also donate your time 
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Yeah that’s fair.
Personally I like the ideals of the distro, where the focus is on the quality of the OS rather than all the other BS that other ones focus on.
Well, it’s been great so far, only a few weird things I need to sort out 
As far as my systems go, after leaving my last job I’ve wanted to purge Fedora off of everything (no longer any benefit to using Fedora now). I had been intending on moving everything back to Linux Mint, but OpenMandriva may be they way to go (setting it up on a test laptop currently). I had used Mandrake Linux back in the late 90’s and early 2000s.
But at the moment too busy job hunting to be migrating all my machines yet.
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Yep, I saw Lunduke’s talk on OM and downloaded Rome. I installed it in a proxmox VM and like it so much I’m going to install it on my HP Z2 mini workstation to replace the Fedora 41 that’s currently there.
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