My experience with ROME plasma x86_64 build 2048

Coffee break
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Greetings!

2048 was the latest at the time of installation.

Performed manual partitioning and didn’t run into problems with the much-dreaded Calamares.
Installed just fine. It was an offline installation.

Upon installation, went into System Settings and set the system up to my liking (nothing too crazy).
However I found policy kit kinda br… well not functioning properly. It’s kinda hardish to give an accurate description but I shall provide footage on demand.

I knew firewalld was included, hence I looked for a front end to configure it. To my rather not so pleasant surprise, I could only find plasma-firewall which I didn’t find useful at all.

Suggestion: no longer include plasma-firewall into the builds. Include firewall-config instead. I wouldn’t mind if you included firewall-applet as well but the latter is of lesser importance.

I proceeded to fully update the system from Konsole with only the main repository enabled and everything went perfectly well.

I tried to install dnfdrake but failed. Enabled unsuported and was finally able to install it. From Konsole.

Suggestion: no longer include dnfdragora as, in Rome, it serves no useful purpose. I were you, I’d remove even discover. Include dnfdrake into main and into the builds.

As an avid multimedia user that I am, installed k3b. One of the main reasons OpenMandriva had arisen my interest in the first place is that it has the most up-to-date cdrtools (comparatively to other distributions). RIP Joerg Shilling. Noticed that k3b pulled in dvd+rw-tools as well other back ends (if I recall correctly) but not the technically defective abandonware cdrkit of which wodim and genisoimage are part of. I’m yet to find out if there’s any real benefit in growisofs. Just curious why you haven’t opted for a simpler k3b + cdrtools combo. You fused dvd+rw-tools and k3b. There’s no way to remove dvd+rw-tools without removing k3b. IMHO, burning disks is just as old school as using a desktop computer. And no, USB thumb drives and optical media are not interchangeable technologies.

I noticed that you have kuserfeedback implemented in such a way that it’s not even cleanly removable. Some other distributions have not complied it at all. You do have an option to totally get rid of it as well as of all the other nonsense that it comes with. It’s a totally useless piece of junk. Pollutes the hard drive with useless metadata. My kind suggestion is to get rid of it.

I were you, I would also get rid of any and all shortcuts to install software. IMHO the right way is either from the command line or from dnfdrake that is by far the most capable front end that I have ever seen. It’s a gem.

To sum it up, despite some nuisances that are mostly minor, I’ve been having a top experience on build 2048. Wonderful and truly unique, as advertised. Nice community as well. It’s a keeper. Noticed the new build.

Keywords: policy kit, firewall-config, dnfdrake, no hacky shortcuts, top distribution

:hugs:

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Thanks for the hearty welcome. You’re awesome. :+1:

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@tekky Welcome.
Thanks for your kind words, suggestions and feedback.

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These are in the repositories and are available for installation. You could ask on OpenMandriva Chat as to why they are not included by default. Same for k3b.

There are folks in contributor that want to see this as well. Discover is part of KDE packages. We have one or more developers that would not want to see this removed. I only use dnfdragora, Discover, or dnfdrake rarely and mostly only when I test them. Package management from the terminal is about the easiest way I can think of for non-technical users to get comfortable with using commands in terminal. And being even a wee bit comfortable with this is a tremendous asset using Linux (or Windows, Apple).

Again best to ask devs at OpenMandriva Chat.

Edit: A lot of this probably boils down to very few doers plus we can not please all the people all the time. For instance there are users that would complain about dnfdragora or Discover being removed. All of the doers in OM have To Do Lists that are to long to ever catch up.

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@rugyada You’re most welcome. :+1:

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@ben79 I understand what you mean. At the moment it’s polkit that most concerns me. I’ll check it again in build 2097 and provide a short video should it still be the case.

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I know that firewall-config is in main but I’d much rather like to connect to the internet after offline installation with firewalld already configured.

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Are you behind a router?

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Yes but I don’t trust it much. I’m in the process of building one that can intercept both in-band and out-of-band traffic.

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PolicyKit is a toolkit for defining and handling authorizations.
It is used for allowing unprivileged processes to speak to privileged
processes

Policykit is a discussion to have with developers. I don’t know much about it. I do know it is basic to the design of a given operating system for how things are authenticated and perhaps other things.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Polkit

https://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/PolicyKitOne

It is likely the OpenMandriva’s implementation is unique to OpenMandriva. It is likely this is intentional and the developers (who would decide this, mostly) believe they have good reasons. But there may be things needing adjustment so feel free to document. Keep in mind bug report.