Hello everyone,
First of all, I would like to say that I really enjoyed trying OpenMandriva ROME. This was my first time installing and using OpenMandriva, and I wanted to share some feedback from the perspective of an ordinary desktop user.
I am not an OpenMandriva developer or an experienced contributor, so these are not meant as complaints. I am sharing them because I think small improvements in the first-time user experience could make OpenMandriva easier to understand and more welcoming to new users.
- Software management can be confusing for a new user
After installing the GNOME edition, I naturally expected to be able to manage applications using graphical tools.
I noticed that DNFDragora was installed, so I initially assumed that this was the normal graphical application manager for OpenMandriva. However, I later discovered that OpenMandriva’s own documentation recommends using DNF from the command line for installing and removing packages, and that DNFDragora is not the preferred solution.
For a new user coming from another Linux distribution, this is not obvious at all. If an application is installed by default, most users will assume that it is a recommended tool.
Perhaps the default installation could either:
- provide a clearly recommended graphical package manager;
- remove or hide tools that are not recommended for normal package transactions; or
- clearly explain in the Welcome application which tool should be used for installing, removing and updating software.
The current documentation is actually quite helpful once you find it, but a new user does not necessarily know that they need to look for it.
- GNOME Software did not work as I expected
I also tried GNOME Software because I assumed that, on a GNOME installation, this would be the natural place to install and remove applications.
However, I was not able to use it to remove some applications that were installed on my system.
Again, perhaps this is related to how OpenMandriva handles RPM packages, PackageKit, or the particular GNOME configuration. But from a normal user’s perspective, the experience is simply confusing: there is a graphical application store, but it does not appear to be able to perform all the basic software-management tasks.
It would be helpful if the GNOME ISO either had a clearly supported graphical solution or explained this limitation to the user.
- GNOME ISO version versus repository version
Another thing I noticed was the GNOME version included in the ISO.
I downloaded the GNOME ROME ISO and installed it. The ISO came with GNOME 49, but after updating the system I noticed that GNOME 50 was already available in the official OpenMandriva repositories.
I understand that an ISO is a snapshot and that this can naturally happen with a rolling distribution. However, for a new user it can be confusing to install a “current” ROME ISO and immediately find that a newer desktop version is already available in the repositories.
Perhaps it would be useful to make the ISO build date and the desktop version especially prominent on the download page, or to make it clearer that the ISO is a snapshot and will receive newer packages immediately after installation.
- The download page was difficult to navigate
This was probably the biggest issue I had before installation.
When I first went to the OpenMandriva website, I found it surprisingly difficult to understand which ISO I should download.
There are several concepts to understand:
- ROME
- Rock
- Cooker
- Plasma
- GNOME and other Spins
- x86_64
- different ISO variants
- SourceForge folders and snapshots
For an experienced OpenMandriva user this may be perfectly understandable, but for someone installing OpenMandriva for the first time, there is a lot of information to process before simply answering the question:
“Which ISO should I download?”
A more guided download page could make a big difference. For example:
New user → ROME → x86_64 → choose desktop
with a short explanation of each option.
The current website does contain the necessary information, but I had to spend some time figuring out how everything was organized.
Overall
Despite these points, I had a very positive experience exploring OpenMandriva. I especially like the idea of ROME and the fact that the project is building its own distribution and package ecosystem.
My intention with this post is simply to provide feedback from the perspective of someone who was installing OpenMandriva for the first time.
Experienced Linux users already know how to work around these things, but I think the first 30 minutes of a new user’s experience are particularly important.
Thank you to everyone working on OpenMandriva. I hope this feedback is useful, and I would be happy to provide more details or screenshots if any of these points need clarification.
