My first impression of OpenMandriva

Hello all,

I recently viewed The Lunduke Journal’s Youtube video (watch?v=y1AWos_zm6o – I can’t include links in my post) about OpenMandriva. A distribution that does not push some kind ideology unrelated to Linux seems to be rare these days. So I decided to give OM (specifically OpenMandrivaLx.rolling-snapshot.20241225.3522-plasma6x11.x86_64.iso) a look.

(I see the download process is still very confusing. Picking the ROME release, on the ‘release-picking’ page takes me to ABF which provides the above. But the download from Sourceforge provides openmandriva.rome-24.12-plasma6.x11.x86_64.iso. And, clicking “ROME” on the ‘downloads’ page takes me to an even different ABF page.)

I’m still playing around with it in a QEMU/KVM virtual machine, but I initially experience a few issues. The first one is merely more of an annoyance. (There is also one other thing that IMO gives a less-than-stellar impression. But, it is a very minor issue and only my opinion, so I’ll defer that to another time.)

#1 During installation and after selecting my language (the default presented) on the Welcome screen, the next screen (Locale) did not respect my choice nor my location. It forced both my location to Europe/London and forced my preferred language to EN_GB. And, I see why.

In the Calamares ‘locale.conf’ file, the location is configured to force it to Europe/London. Why?

Why not allow Geoip to at least try determining the location instead of explicitly disabling it and forcing the location instead?

After a boot to the Live system, I made modifications to both ‘welcome.conf’ and ‘locale.conf’ before doing the installation, and it worked perfectly - just as expected.

#2 The repo files in /etc/yum.repos.d/ use newline delimited lists for ‘baseurl’. KDE’s Discover, when using Settings to enable/disable repos, does not understand this and improperly reformats the list using semi-colons. This causes the repos to be ignored due to the invalid configuration.

Apparently, newline delimited lists are not officially supported:
dnf[dot]readthedocs[dot]io/en/stable/conf_ref.html#list-label

#3 And then there’s this:

[user@openmandriva-x8664 ~]$ man dnf
No manual entry for dnf

That, in my view, does not inspire confidence.

I want to like OpenMandriva. Heck, I cut my Linux teeth on Mandrake. And, I don’t know of any other distro that the maintainers of which put forth the effort to remove telemetry from the packages they ship. That is awesome.

BTW, what is ABF? The “About” page at abf[dot]openmandriva[dot]org/ takes me to the OpenMandriva “About” page.

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man dnf4 :wink:

Yes, I know that. But, others may not – especially those not familiar with a system that uses ‘dnf’. The same goes for ‘dnf.conf’ (‘dnf4.conf’), and, I’m sure, others.

Issues such as this can be easily and simply prevented with, as in this case:
ln -s /usr/share/man/man8/dnf4.8.zst /usr/share/man/man8/dnf.8.zst

And, how about this one?

[user@openmandriva-x8664 man8]$ man ln
No manual entry for ln

Welcome @tleedavidson to OpenMandriva and our forum. This forum is for users of OpenMandriva Linux operating systems.

OpenMandriva Forums are primarily users helping other users.

You are welcome to talk to our developers at OpenMandriva Chat.

Users with a problem need to read How to get better results when posting about problems before reporting any issue or problem. The article is not too long and Do Read.

When a new user has an issue please look in the documentation for OMLx. OpenMandriva wiki, Forum Resources guide and the “Search” function of the forum.

If you don’t find what you are looking for, try an Internet search. One can find out a lot from documentation or forum posts at other Linux distros. If user finds something written for another distro but you have some doubt ask at OpenMandriva Chat.

For serious technical issues and package/feature requests please file a bug report here.

Note: We are a small group. All the contributors and developers here are unpaid volunteers.
You can make OpenMandriva grow and improve by getting involved

Any help with testing would be appreciated whether one is technically proficient or a very non-technical user. The more people and more hardware we can get involved the better we can make OMLx releases and packaging. We do a lot of testing in VM’s as well. Developers tend to use Qemu, most user level testers use VirtualBox.

Edit:

Some hopefully helpful suggestions,

We request that problems reported in forum or in a bug report be limited to one problem per thread or report.

We suggest that if your problem reported in the forum or on OM-Chat is not resolved in a few days to please file a proper bug report.

If you have not already done so scroll thru the “Big Fat Warning” at the top of this page and read the information or use the links provided.

Before reporting any problem please read this.

We are simply and respectfully trying to get people to be aware that as a very small group we are volunteering, unpaid, our time, knowledge, ect, to help you.

I had read “How to get better results when posting about problems”. That page is obviously focused toward someone who is asking for help. I am not.

I simply provided feedback on my first impression of OpenMandriva based on issues I encountered. And, these issues, BTW, could be relatively easily fixed so that other potential new OpenMandriva users aren’t put off by them.

In order to chat with the developers, I would have to create a Matrix or a Telegram account. Why would I want to do that just to point them to my original post so they could take a look and see if there is actually any validity to the issues I mentioned? Don’t you already have one of those accounts? Couldn’t you simply notify them of the post so the issues might get fixed, again, so that potential new OpenMandriva users aren’t put off by them? (Those are rhetorical questions.)

If I were a OpenMandriva user, I would take the time and make the effort to chat with the developers to get things resolved for the benefit of the community and potential newcomers to the community.

But I am not an OpenMandriva user, and, given the rather irrelevant responses I have received, I don’t think I will become one. You point me toward pages directed toward one who is seeking help, which does not apply to me. One problem per thread or report would not fit the format of an overall first impression.

Again, I am not asking for help. I made the effort and took the time to create an account here so that I could help OpenMandriva by relaying my first impression.

I thought this community would appreciate the honest feedback which gives it an opportunity for improvement. But, the feedback seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Ben.

As far as I am concerned, this thread may be locked. I will be requesting that my forum account be disabled.

It is a template for all first time forum users, I would never have thought that might offend someone. Apologies.

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If you find it’s too difficult for you then just go with the SourceForge link.

In a dsynced yesterday Cooker sys i am also seeing:

$ man ln
No manual entry for ln

Edit: And same in ROME P6 VM. So wonder why @rugyada has different results?

Ok, I did not yet.
This may be a regression then. I think nothing that can’t be quickly fixed.
Thanks for reporting.

Yes @tleedavidson thanks for reporting these issues.

The man dnf is because we have both dnf4 and dnf5 now and they both have man pages, dnf5 is the future ofc.

It’s not about it being too difficult for me. It’s about it being confusing for potential new OpenMandriva users. My goodness, did you think that I posted my initial impression solely for my own benefit?

Apologies. Meaning the following to be constructive and proactive.

There is a bit of a frustration factor here because this has already been reported up the yin yang. So maybe we are guilty of expecting people to read a bit before posting. If I go back a few years anyone (learned the hard way) would get blasted for not reading and searching around the forum first.

Try volunteering your time when you have a “To Do” list you can’t keep up with and people keep posting the same reports and asking the same questions over and over. Now to be fair the new person does not see that. Is there a perfect way to handle this? When we are stressed for time and working our read ends off to get out a much needed new release? Again I know the new user does not see this. But I don’t have a perfect answer and I am not capable of seeing every persons perspective that posts here.

Are we figuring things out as we go, you betcha we are. And we will make mistakes. I personally try to correct any mistakes I make ASAP. I have plenty of experience at that. I am confident everyone in the OM Contributor does exactly the same.

No, got the point and thank you for that.
Can you please tell what is not clear yet, after reading this posts - that we made, as best as we could - in order to make the downloads more understandable for newcomers?

If you have trouble downloading OMLx iso
Finding and Downloading the iso is too complicated

If you can please suggest improvements that would be helpful.

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Yeah, if you can’t be civil when a misunderstanding occurs (especially on your part) then you probably wouldn’t enjoy our community very much. Which would make it difficult to get help when you actually need it instead of being offended that you were offered it in the way we greet everyone when they post here the first time.

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To be honest, I think those two forum links you posted would not be beneficial to newcomers. I highly doubt that one wishing to get started by downloading an ISO would even check the Development section of the forum as it would likely be assumed that it is for OpenMandriva developers.

(Sidenote @ben79 regarding “If you have trouble downloading OMLx iso”: I copied one of the HTTP ISO links from ABF and simply changed it to HTTPS in the Chromium location bar before fetching the URL. It downloaded no problem. The ABF subdomain is obviously able to handle SSL over HTTP, so perhaps those links can simply be changed to “https”.)

IMO, the main problem is simply this:
There are too many paths to too many choices.

For example, The “Discover ROME” and “Discover ROCK” links on the home page lead to Wiki pages which then link to Sourceforge. The “Download” link on the home page ultimately leads to a list of builds on ABF which does not include instructions on how actually get to a downloadable ISO (but which is available on ABF by clicking on the build ID).

So, here are my suggestions.

#1 Make “Discover ROME” and “Discover ROCK” link to the ‘info-rome’ and ‘info-rock’ pages, respectively. Then delete those Wiki pages as they are virtually useless.

#2 Incorporate ‘release-picking’ into ‘downloads’ and link the “Download” button on the home page directly to ‘downloads’. Also, remove the “Download Now” button from ‘release-picking’ as it doesn’t even explain what would be downloaded and only adds to the confusion.

#3 Either remove the text, “The OpenMandriva project offers different image types available for download. If in doubt, use the full featured Plasma6 x86_64 ISO image.” Or, at least describe what exactly “full featured Plasma6” means and provide a link to it.

#4 Change the “Download the ISO file” section on ‘downloads’ to simply something like, “A link to download the ISO for your chosen version is provided in the respective version page above.”

The “Torrent and direct download (archive.org)” link is also virtually useless. That linked page provides no descriptions, no torrent files that I can see, and does not even include ROCK 5. I see that torrent files at least for ROCK are provided at Sourceforge. If torrent files cannot be stored on ABF, links to torrent files stored on Sourceforge can be included in the respective version pages.

And lastly, #5 Decide if you want people to download the ISOs either from Sourceforge exclusively or from ABF exclusively, not both. (A link to other downloads could be provided on ‘downloads’ or the respective version pages with text similar to, “If you know you want a specific ISO or wish to explore, you can find other downloads [here]”.)

ABF provides checksum files while Sourceforge, at least for ROME, does not. Downloading from ABF would incur more bandwidth on the OM server while using Sourceforge would off-load that.

If bandwidth is not a major issue, I would link to files on ABF. But, I would not link to the page listing all the builds (except perhaps at the “other downloads” page I parenthetically mentioned two paragraphs above). I would link directly to the build ID page for the latest build. For example, for ROME, this would be
[ABF_Subdomain]/platforms/rolling/products/73/product_build_lists/3574. Unless updating that link can be automated, yes, it would need to be manually updated for each new build.

If it is desired that downloads be from Sourceforge instead, then link directly to the latest build folder.

If I have made anything unclear, just let me know and I’ll try to do a better job of explaining what I mean.

I hope it helps.

Thank you for pointing out and explaining the frustration factor. Newcomers likely don’t realize that it goes both ways.

Perfect? Not likely. But, perhaps a “Known Issues / Work In Progress” post pinned in the Announcements section, or a Wiki page for that purpose with a link in a pinned post in Announcements, might help.

Being blunt, candid, and/or direct does not constitute a lack of civility.

The post I found offensive implied two things:

  1. That whatever issue I posted about was my problem (“your problem”), and
  2. That I should have done a better job asking for help. (Why else would I need to be told how to better ask for help?)

Since I was not asking for help, that post was inapplicable to my situation and, therefore, an inappropriate response.

If that post was an automated response, which I now suspect it was but didn’t know at the time, then it should say so right at the top with a notice and disclaimer such as, “(NOTE: This is an automated response which is triggered whenever a new forum user makes a first post. It is intended to help us help you. Its content may not be applicable to your particular situation.)” And, “your problem” should be changed to “the problem you reported.” (Tag: @ben76)

So, if I misunderstood anything about that post, I misunderstood its intent because it lacked context. But yet, that is somehow my fault?

And, you think I should appreciate being offered help for which I did not even ask? That defies logic.

But, you may be right that I would not enjoy this community. Thank you for letting me know.

Being patronizing in the face of being called out for insecure behavior, does.

Your expectations that we should know how best to make you comfortable by tone policing is absolutely unrealistic. That is a bad faith argument.

Yes, how you react to misunderstandings, whether you perceive them to be your fault or not, is entirely your own behavior. No one is here forcing you to react in the way you did.

Yes, I think mature social interactions would dictate that being offered help by someone making their best faith effort should be, at the very least, perceived as a neutral encounter that could warrant clarification prior to misunderstanding and insecure criticism.

That is probably the least disingenuous and most honest response in this interaction, thus far. You show up and give almost two positive comments but mostly negative criticisms. You misunderstand the intent of the responder that has been responding to every other newcomer in the same way which could have been easily deduced by searching the forums. Finally, you proceed to tell us what we should do to fix these issues you cited (some of which would require further understanding of things that you do not know, or were misstated), but provide no indication that you would be willing to commit any time to assist with resolving them. All for a Linux distribution that it cost you absolutely nothing but your own time to download and try out. Which, by your own admission in quite a few more words, was a waste of your time.

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I don’t know where I heard this, but…

When in doubt, consider that no ill will was intended. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m brand new to OM and had zero issue finding and downloading the .iso that I wanted. It may not be the most intuitive but it’s far from difficult. Perhaps streamlining the process is on the roadmap but I see no reason why it should be a top priority.

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