ROME iso problems (12/06/25) Solved

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Report on ROME isos made today after the major ROME upgrade lastnight 12/05/25. The are iso #'s 4333, 4337, 4338, an 4339. Need to seperate them between X11 and Wayland. This is a far as I could get today as it is late and sleepy time.

Both X11 and Wayland:

1. Isos boot to sddm login screen instead of to plasma desktop.
2. Calamares does not start from the desktop icon of from Application Menu. It does not start with the normal pkexec calamares -d. It will start using sudo.

X11 only:

1. sddm login screen is set to Failsafe X session instead of Plasma X11.
2. Plasma6 desktop takes to long to load, I did not time this but it is and that usually does indicate some problem somewhere.
3. During my usual ‘iso quick check’ the system crashes, it crashed before I could get a journal or xorg.0.log.

Wayland only:

1. sddm login is set to Plasma Wayland, that is a good thing
2. Based on an ‘iso quick check’ these seem to work OK over all.
3. But to install user would need to use sudo calamares d instead to the correct pkexec calamares -d I am not sure if that is or is not OK.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

This for now is hardware testing and any comparisions to installed systems also regard hardware systems.
Computer is multi-boot with 1 Cooker, 1 ROME, 1 Rock P6, 1 Rock P5 (yes that still is a thing), and partitons for one test install. The 4 installed systems are using znve1.

Machine:
Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: Vivobook_ASUSLaptop M1605YA_M1605YA

CPU:
Info: 6-core model: AMD Ryzen 5 7530U with Radeon Graphics bits: 64

Graphics:
Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Barcelo driver: amdgpu v: kernel

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

So next step was to check was to check most recent Cooker X11 isos to be sure they are working as expected. Checked Cooker X11 # 4321 and 4325 and they behave normally. Specifically:

1. isos boot to Plasma6 desktop
2. wifi starts from applet in system tray
3. Calamares installer starts from desktop icon
4. Go through Calamares up to partition page>Manual partitioning and be sure all partitons on my computer are shown
5. Check in Erase disk page has the 4 entries for swap and the 4 ‘approved’ file system types in drop down menu
6. Randomly check that things on desktop, systemtray, menu panel, and favorites list all at least open

That is the basic ‘iso quick check’. From experience we know if it paases all of this there is a high likelihood that the iso will work on most hardware. As far as the ‘random check’ goes we make and test so many isos that everything gets checked as far over a few weeks.

To check if installer works you have to do an install. I do periodic installs of Cooker and ROME in Qemu VM and on hardware partition. And yes Rock gets tested at time of Rock point releases. After that Rock does not change much until next point release.

I personally test Plasma6 isos and installs. I used to include LXQt but that got to be to much. Heck what I do now is to much as far as being time consuming.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

The answer is there aren’t any really good isos for ROME at this time. If you see here and here I have been testing and reporting and developers are working on fixing this.

My best guess best on my own testing and memory is that the Wayland isos # 4317 and 4320 are probably OK but not perfect. For X11 the situation seems worse maybe isos # 4172 and maybe # 4271.

Then user would need to follow the upgrade instructions here.

I have put a heck of a lot of work into this and not yet gotten positive results.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Finally we are able to make new and mostly better ROME isos after the ROME Major Upgrade of Feb. 13, 2026.

New ROME isos are available here

The new VirtualBox 7.2.6 seems broken there is a bug report.

I checked the Plasma 6 isos #'s 4403, 4404, 4406, 4407. They boot on my laptop as expected, Calamares installer opens from desktop icon as expected, OM-welcome is present and seems working normally. Checked that things in system tray, desktop icons, menu panel, and application launcher favorites all at least open and appear working. I have not done an installation yet but these isos should be working OK.

I checked LXQt isos #'s 4409, 4410 and they are sort of OK. For me the brightness settings on my laptop did not work, not did brightness settings in Configuration Center. This seems to me to be a significant problem as the default brightness is to dark and makes things difficult to see, but them I’m older so… There is no OM-Welcome present. Calamares installer does open normally from desktop icon, there is however one problem. The map on the time zone setting page is not properly displayed. This occurs in both the X11 and Wayland isos. So these isos are workable but should be considered Alpha or Experimental. To me they seem rough around the edges.

There are also Gnome, Cosmic, XFCE isos. The Gnome iso should be OK but I do not test this. The Cosmic and XFCE isos are also not tested by me and should be considered Alpha or Experimental.

Since the primary focus of OMLx has always been Plasma desktop I am marking this thread as resolved. But it is also fair to say partially resolved. Given the small size of the contributor group this is not to bad.

Should you encounter problems with the Plasma6 or Gnome isos please post in the Support section with a descriptive title and all the information requested.

Should you encounter problems with the LXQt, Cosmic, or XFCE isos please post in the Development/Testing section with a descriptive title and all the information you can manage.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

And I at long last I have been able to get some new ROME isos posted at SourceForge.

There is a 26.02 Folder that incudes 4 Plasma6 isos and a Gnome 3 isos here.

There are also updated isos in the Nightly.Builds folder here.

There is some duplication between those two folders. I just learned how to do this and am learning as I go. Whether I can keep up with this is a “we shall see” matter. This is a time consuming, pain in the rear end, type of task. I have to download the isos to my laptop and them upload them to SourceForge.

So I am not promising perfection at this, just that I will try to do better.

Just to mention one can also fine the latest Cooker, ROME, and Rock/6.0 isos from the respective pages here. They are pinned at the top of the list.