Using the latest ROME isos at ABF. (12/09/25)

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Hello,

First what is not a problem. X11 and Wayland both work just fine on my Cooker, ROME, and Rock partitions on my laptop. Both work fine as far as I know in Qemu VM’s. Wayland works OKish in VBox but X11 does not. I am using ROME X11 on my laptop right now as I write this.

Requirements:

I have Searched the forum for my issue and found nothing related or helpful
I have checked the Resources category (Resources Index)
I have reviewed the Wiki for relevant information
I have read the the Release Notes and Errata

OpenMandriva Lx version:

Most recent ROME P6 isos

Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):

KDE Plasma6

Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant):

Some problems with most recent ROME P6 isos, those isos are here.

Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):

Test machine:

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

There are some problems with the most recent ROME isos in ABF. Developers are aware of these problems and they are being looked at for solution/s.

The ROME P6 Wayland isos (#'s 4337, 4338):

These will boot to sddm login screen instead of directly to Plasma desktop as expected. The sddm login screen is already set to ‘Plasma Wayland session’ and there is no password so just press enter to login.

Calamares does not start from icon on desktop. To work around this open Konsole and type su to become root then type echo /usr/bin/bash >>/etc/shells and then Calamares should open.

The ROME P6 X11 isos (#'s 4348, 4349):

These may have more problems for some users.

In my tests these isos boot to sddm login screen and the display session is set to ‘Failsafe X’. There you want so select ‘Plasma X11 session’. Then desktop will take 30 sec. or more to load, not a good sign. Also in my tests desktop crashes within 30 sec. and I decided it was generally useless to proceed.

If you don’t see these problems then it should be OK to proceed just select ‘Plasma X11 session’ on the sddm login screen and in Konsole and type su to become root then type echo /usr/bin/bash >>/etc/shells if you want to use Calamares to install.

If you do experience the problems I did with X11 then you could use one of the older X11 isos # 4172 or #4271 and then upgrade your installed system using the instruction here.

I hope this makes sense to users. This has been a very time consuming and frustrating journey to get to this point of understanding.

I need to emphasize that is is not X11 that is broken, this is strictly some problem with our isos, developers are aware of this and working on this. As far as I know installed ROME X11 systems are working OK, I am using one right now.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Another thing we have run across is that for some users might benefit in X11 if they are having problems is to install the x11-driver-video-* package for your hardware. You can list these packages with dnf search x11-driver-video.

Some obvious ones are x11-driver-video-amdgpu, x11-driver-video-intel, x11-driver-video-nouveau, and x11-driver-video-vboxvideo, there are more in the list.

I have installed x11-driver-video-vboxvideo on a couple of VBox VM’s and it seems to help, but not totally heal using X11 in VBox.

On my laptop GPU: AMD Barcelo [Integrated] I have not noticed any help from x11-driver-video-amdgpu but other users report that this does help.

[saberking]

It seems that it is not easy at all to get the ROME isos working so maybe there should be a warning on the website? I have lost so much time trying to get the isos to work and yes I’ve done it now but had I known I would have just downloaded Rock instead. I kept thinking it was my own fault that stuff wasn’t working and it was very demoralising. I think that this is the worst possible experience for someone new to OM.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Welcome @saberking to OpenMandriva forum and community.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

@ben79

The ROME P6 Wayland isos (#'s 4337, 4338):

These will boot to sddm login screen instead of directly to Plasma desktop as expected. The sddm login screen is already set to ‘Plasma Wayland session’ and there is no password so just press enter to login.

Calamares does not start from icon on desktop. To work around this open Konsole and type su to become root then type echo /usr/bin/bash >>/etc/shells and then Calamares should open.

New Plasma6 Wayland x86_64 iso # 4360 has the same issues. You may have to become root to run echo /usr/bin/bash >>/etc/shells so Calamares opens normally.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

@saberking

I kept thinking it was my own fault that stuff wasn’t working and it was very demoralising. I think that this is the worst possible experience for someone new to OM.

I definitely agree that this is a very bad situation and bad public relations for this distro.

To get some movement on this users need to go on OM-Chat and ask developers to do something about this. I have asked enough times, if my asking were going to do anything this would have been dealt with many weeks ago.

[rugyada]

Well, no new ROME releases have been officially announced so far, so all recent ISOs are to be considered Beta and nightly builds for now.
After so many and big changes that’s kind of expected imo.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Some encouraging news on our isos. Progress: New Cooker Plasma6 isos #'s 4363, 4374, 4365, 4366 appear to be working as expected. The basic quick test: isos boot directly ‘Live’ to environment, wifi connects, sound works, OM-Welcome is present as expected and seems functional, Calamares opens normally and seems in working order. Open a few things in systray, application menu and do forth. So far these isos seem good.

1. If anyone wanted to help test these one thing is to boot one of the isos and check that everything on the isos opens as it should.
2. Another is to do installs in VM or harware from some of these isos.

Why this matters to ROME? >Workflow< which simplistically is Cooker>ROME(rolling)>Rock(current 6.0).

In theory the next UM upgrade should also come with new proper working ROME isos. I have no time frame for when, a guess, perhaps 2 - 3 weeks maybe sooner.

If one encounters problems please start a forum thread with a descriptive title and include as much information as you can. Please one issue per forum thread. This is so other people can find your thread if they have the same problem.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

ROME P6 Wayland isos boot to sddm login instead of to desktop

ROME P6 isos Calamares does not start from desktop icon

ROME P6 X11 isos seem to be broken

These are being worked on. No ETA at present.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

I should add that 2 of these issues:

1. Isos booting to sddm login screen instead of directly to ‘Live’ desktop
2. Calamares installer not starting correctly

Seem to be fixed in most recent Cooker isos so these should be fixed simply with the next major ROME package upgrade. The issues with X11 display not working are deeper, more technical. Nonetheless these are being looked at and worked on.