Happy Easter holidays!
we made fruitful use of this time to provide you a nice surprise.
The independent, community controlled distribution OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 fixed point release (as opposed to the rolling release branch), is out right now.
Main features:
- KDE Plasma 6 desktop by default (X11 and Wayland available)
- Community spins featuring latest desktop environments LXQt 2.2.0, GNOME 48.1, XFCE and COSMIC 1.0 alpha
- This also features the first official stable release of the OpenMandriva Server edition (more on this near the end of the announcement)
If you run OMLx 6.0 inside VirtualBox, we strongly recommend using the X11 version, since there are some known problems with Wayland on VirtualBox emulated GPU.
VirtualBox users may need to set VMSVGA controller to boot successfully.
It works fine on most hardware and in QEmu with KVM.
- OM-Welcome Startup and Configuration tool, specifically designed for OpenMandriva KDE Plasma desktop environment received some more improvements.
- Software upgraded to the most recent version, as default in the ISO install media or available in repositories, such as:
Desktop Environments: Plasma Desktop 6.3.4 (and 5.27.12), KDE Applications 25.04.0 (and 23.08.5), KDE Frameworks 6.13.0 (and 5.116), Qt 6.9.0 (and 5.15.15)
Kernel: 6.14.2 and 6.15.0-rc2, built with clang
LibreOffice Suite 25.2.3 with Qt 6 and Plasma 6 integration, Chromium Browser 135.0.7049.84 patched with Google spyware disabled and JPEG-XL support re-enabled, Firefox 137.0.2 patched with spyware disabled, Falkon 25.04.0, GIMP 3.0.2, VirtualBox 7.1.8
- Development Tools: LLVM/Clang 19.1.7, GCC 14.2.1, Glibc 2.41, Systemd 257.5, Mesa 25.0.4, Java 24
- Available in OpenMandriva repository proton and proton-experimental, which make Proton available outside of Steam, without the need to install any non-free code
- Security and privacy: promptly addressed all the recent security vulnerabilities
Users of OMLx 5.0 are strongly advised to opt for a fresh installation of Rock 6.0 to enjoy the new Plasma6 desktop.
First official release of the Server Edition
Servers and desktops are different in many ways - more than most general purpose Linux distributions would make you believe.
In OpenMandriva, we have opted to make those different use cases possible by building radically different versions. While the desktop editions are meant to be so easy to use and learn that a first time Linux user can instantly get things done, the server edition assumes users know what they’re doing - most notably it does not have a graphical user interface (which would just waste space and get on the way in a typical headless server).
Also, server images are released as a disk image instead of the ISO image format for desktops — that way, they can be deployed in virtualization solutions like qemu, OpenStack, various cloud providers etc. without an installation process (just load the image into the VM and start using it).
Of course, it is also possible to install OpenMandriva Server on hardware - simply dd the disk image to a USB storage device, boot from it, and use the install-openmandriva script in user omv’s home directory to install it to the destination disk. This is a different installer from the GUI installer present in the desktop versions: It is a shell script that experienced admins can easily adapt to any custom needs.
The Server images come with a minimal set of packages preloaded - the idea is to install just what is needed for the user’s specific needs, be it nginx or apache, powerdns or bind, postgresql or mariadb, ...
Packages of most relevant server software are available for easy installation with dnf install.
The OpenMandriva Server images come with a preconfigured user omv with password omv. They also support cloud-init to allow customizations in cloud providers.
Server images are available for generic x86_64, aarch64 (ARM64) with UEFI support (tested in VMs and on Ampere eMAG and Altra servers), and AMD Zen (EPYC, Threadripper, Ryzen - the generic x86_64 version works for those processors as well, but the special version is more optimized).
Please read Release Notes and Errata at OpenMandriva wiki official documentation.
Users are encouraged to report impressions and issues at the official forum.
Critical issues should be documented via bug report.
Real-time interaction with developers is facilitated joining the #openmandriva-cooker:matrix.org room on matrix.
Download OpenMandriva Lx 6.0
- SourceForge
- Mirrors
If you want to contribute or support OpenMandriva development, consider joining the team or making a donation.
OpenMandriva Lx represents a culmination of innovation, user-centric design, and a commitment to security. Join us in embracing the future of open-source computing.