Hi all. Sorry for my poor english. I’m not a native english speaker, so I am helping myself with google translate.
I was a Mandriva user and appreciated this system very much. After closing of Mandriva, I switched to other systems. I used Arch, Mageia and Fedora.
Some time ago I started using Lx3 and I will say that I liked it very much. I left Mageia for OpenMandriva Lx3.
Recently, due to the lack of updates for Lx3 (probably due to work on Lx4) I decided to try Lx4 (alpha / beta).
Here are my feelings.
Frequent updates, fresh packages like Plasma, kernel or mesa.
Keep doing this. To make your system visible for other Linux users you have to update packages often.
I read that you use Clang instead of GCC. That’s great. You have found a niche and try to develop in it. It distinguishes you from Mageia or Fedora.
Perfecting Plasma5. There are few systems that Plasma5 chose as their main environment. In many other Plasma5 is present, but is treated as a second-class citizen.
Nice graphical options for easy configuration and automatic removal of old kernels.
That’s how it was in Lx3. In Lx4 I see that you abandoned Draktools - a tool that I knew and appreciated in Mandriva.
Mageia is still supporting them. Is it possible for you to come back to it and support it? I mean this Mandriva Control Center?
Note that today more and more systems are adding graphical options for system management. Such comprehensive control panels. Even in Arch / Manjaro we have such. Mint introduced it. Mageia still has something like that.
What I suggest:
Change the forum script. It is unreadable. Misleading. Little transparency and readability in it, it’s easy to get lost. Searching in it is also difficult.
Give a new script here, make simple sections.
Make announcements appear in it, legible and visible to every user. Not like now. Because it introduces only confusion. See how Arch Linux, Mageia and Fedora forums look like. Do something similar.
Returning to the forum. I noticed that you often close topics too quickly. Sometimes you give a lot of answers, really nothing about the subject. This causes spam, and at the end you close the topic without a meaningful answer. Do not do this. I know, users can be annoyed - especially novices in Linux. But try not to do this. Because it discourages them from you.
Create better news. Make new entries with every week with list of new packages or updated or fixed bugs.
Start writing about: hello today we update kernel from 4.19 to 5.0. Make a news, make a noise.
Contrib as unsupported? No. Please, do not do this. You are the heir of Mandriva and please do not kill what was good and known from Mandriva. Restore the name Contrib while you can.
The unsupported name is very badly associated in the Linux world. Unsupported means that something does not work and the end.
Change it. Please.
Enable additional repositories by default.
Beginners have a problem understanding why a package is available, but can not install it because it is in a different repository. They do not know that you need to manually enable the repository.
Sometimes do not know that such repo exists. They are looking for a package, and if it is in contrib then they are can’t found it. Thus, they form the opinion that you have few packages. Lesser than other distros.
Therefore, I suggest activating the default repo: contrib, restricted and non-free.
Do something with Steam too, because its installation is a massacre. You need to activate the non-free repo first. Later main for 32-bits and just install steam. Later, the 32-bit repo needs to be turned off because it will interfere with the installation and upgrade of regular packages.
The problem will appear again as I update, for example, I will get it updates in 64 main, but the 32-bit Steam repo will still be in the old version. So you have to activate them to avoid dependency problems. There is a big problem for new users. In other systems it is simplified.
Since we’re at Steam. Many games after upgrading to Lx4 have stopped working …
The games worked on Lx3 and still work on Arch or Mageia (even on Mageia Cauldron). Probably it’s about problems with the new GLIBC. Test it and fix it. Please.
See, for example Civilization V on Steam. The game starts and in a moment it goes to the desktop without any errors or logs. Here a small explanation bugzilla.redhat. com/show_bug.cgi?id=1471427#c7
By reporting a developer problem, we’ll find out that the game works on supported systems like Ubuntu, and that is the fault of other distributions and the problem lies with them. So game developer will not help.
Other examples are games from GOGcom or Humble. So what we like the most is DRM-FREE.
For example, Dont Starve game from GOG needs many libraries which are not available in OpenMandriva and if I found this libs in repo like eg libcurl-gnutls it requires version 3, and the system is 4. What causes the error.
Downloading many libs from other systems allowed to run the game in Lx3 but not in Lx4! In the case of Lx4 such a solution results in the fact that game start and after a few moments crash. THis same binary working on Arch, Fedora or with library copy od Mageia 7 (caulron) and even on OpenMandriva lx3.
This needs fixing.
Install some games from GOGcom or Humble store and see what libraries do you need, what versions and add them. And those who have problems, try to fix it.
Playing on Linux is gaining popularity, do not miss it.
Add new packages for games with steam proton as: DXVK and D9VK. This will allow you to play new and old windows games on Linux with Vulkan with almost native performance.
Add Vulkan driver AMDVLK for AMD graphics cards. It works very well, and in many cases better than radv. And in addition, this is the official implementation from AMD. I would like to add that both drivers can be installed simultaneously (when starting the game you can choose which driver to use whether it is radv or amdvlk)
Repair NVIDIA proprietary drivers (because you can not install them).
All known Linux systems provide these drivers.
In errata to LX4, you write that AMD proprietary drivers is dropped by upstream. Not true. AMD still support proprietary amdgpu-pro and provide installers. Can you add it to non-free repo like nvidia drivers? ROSA Linux have it! Why you can not?
Restricted repo. Why is it out of date? Many packages are updated in main but their counterparts with patents are out of date in restricted. Example gstreamer, avidemux etc. Make them update. Since you can update them in main, you can also in restricted.
No many nice programs.
No snap. Please add snap just like flatpack.
Add Spotify, proprietary but available as .deb for debian and ubuntu. You can take a package of .deb and repack it in .rpm just like with Skype.
Add Discord, also proprietary, you can download it in the .deb package or in the tar.gz archive. Make a .rpm package for this.
Add TeamSpeak, proprietary.
Add TeamViewer, proprietary.
Add Viber, proprietary.
Add FoxitPDFReader, proprietary.
Add Dropbox and Mega, proprietary.
Add office like FreeOffice (proprietary), WPS Office (proprietary) and open OnlyOffice.
Add an easy way to install applications like Google Earth, Chrome Browser, Yandex browser, Opera, Brave or Vivaldi. All provide rpm package. You need just import it. Add simple feature to instant install it.
We have some great game emulators from consoles like dolphin, libretro, rpcs3 or PCSX2. Add them, or fix existing installations.
Other desktops:
I see cinnamon and mate but other not working. Can you fix xfce and gnome? I see on your github that packages are up-to date but buggy. Can you fix it. Debug it and try to fix. Please. You dont need to focus development on it but just make it usable.
Also can you add new desktops like deepin or bugdie?
