The best, until OpenMandriva does better: released OMLx 4.0

OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 final release is out now!

 

Exciting news!
Shortly after the release candidate we are very proud to introduce you the fruit of so much work, some visible and much more behind the scenes and under the hood.

OpenMandriva Lx is a cutting edge distribution compiled with LLVM/clang, combined with the high level of optimisation used for both code and linking (by enabling LTO, and profile guided optimizations for some key packages where reliable profile data is easy to generate) used in its building.

OMLx 4.0 brings a number of major changes since 3.x release:

Immediately visible to everyone:

  • KDE Plasma has been updated to 5.15.5 (with Frameworks 5.58 and Applications 19.04.2, Qt 5.12.3);
  • LibreOffice is now working with complete Plasma integration, giving the user familiar system dialogs and an improved look and feel;
  • Falkon, a KDE web browser that uses the same rendering engine as Chromium, is now the default browser, reducing the memory footprint and delivering a more consistent UI;
  • Since the problematic patents on MP3 have expired between the Lx 3 and 4 releases, MP3 decoders and encoders are now included in the main distribution. Video and Audio players have also been updated.
  • OpenMandriva brand-name applications:
    OM Welcome has been updated a lot and OM Control Center is now included in the main distribution;
    OM Control Center replaces the dated DrakX tools;
    OM Repository Management Tool (om-repo-picker), a frontend for DNF package repository selection, is now available
  • Live mode:
    ISO menu new entries for language and keyboard preference
    Upon user’s request, KPatience card games have been included in ISO (live mode only)
  • Calamares new features:
    Easy swap partition option
    Calamares log copied to successfully installed system
    Automagically removing all unused languages at the end of installation
    Calamares now checks whether system is installed in VirtualBox or in real hardware. If in real hardware it removes virtualbox unuseful packages.

Lots of changes are not immediately visible to end users but very important for developers maintaining the system, enabling us to improve the system even faster in the future. Among them:

  • Switch RPM to version 4 and to DNF as software package manager;
  • The toolchains have seen a number of changes. The main C/C++ toolchain is now built around clang 8.0, glibc 2.29 and binutils 2.32, with new wrappers that make it possible for tools like nm to work with LTO files generated by either gcc or clang. gcc 9.1 is also available;
  • The Java stack has been updated to use OpenJDK 12 with package dependencies built around Java Modules.
  • Python has been updated to 3.7.3, and we have successfully removed dependencies on Python 2.x from the main install image (for now, Python 2 continues to be available in the repositories for people who need legacy applications);
  • Perl, Rust and Go have also been updated to current versions;
  • All important libraries have been updated to current versions (e.g. Boost 1.70, poppler 0.76);
  • The kernel has been updated to version 5.1.9 with additional performance improvements. Kernel 5.2-rc4 is also available in the repositories for testing.

Hardware support has been improved a lot. In addition to the usual round of driver updates (including the Mesa 19.1.0 graphics stack), OMLx 4.0 now includes complete ports to aarch64 and armv7hnl platforms. A RISC-V port is also in progress, but not yet ready for release. We have also built a version specifically for current AMD processors (Ryzen, ThreadRipper, EPYC) that outperforms the generic version by taking advantage of new features in those processors (this build will not work on generic x86_64 processors).

We have also rethought our release model. Starting with the 4.0 release, there will be new options available to users. The changes will be announced separately, stay tuned for forthcoming news!

Core packages updated:
Kernel 5.1.9
KDE Plasma: 5.15.5
KDE Frameworks: 5.58.0
KDE Applications: 19.04.2
Qt Framework 5.12.3
Systemd 242
LLVM/clang 8.0.1
Java 12

Main packages updated:
LibreOffice 6.2.4
Firefox Quantum 66.0.5
Krita 4.2.1
DigiKam 6.0
Xorg 1.20.4, Mesa 19.1.0
Calamares 3.2.7

New applications entered the ISO packages list:
Dnfdragora - graphical frontend for package manager, replacement for old rpmdrake
Kuser - users and groups manager tool, replacement for old userdrake
KBackup - tool for the backup of directories or files, replacement for old draksnapshot
OpenMandriva Control Center
OpenMandriva Repository Management Tool

We warmly thank our developers, testers and bug reporters, all our support teams as well as all people at large who are working so hard to make this technically advanced and beautifully artworked distribution.

Special grateful thanks also are due to:
Bernhard Rosenkränzer (aka bero): outstanding developer, Technical Leader and Project Manager, and Chairman of the Association
Alexander Stefanoff-Khryukin and His_Shadow: ABF Build System super-mega-guru
The QA (small but exceptionally gifted) Team and Ben Bullard (aka ben79) who is leading flawlessly the quality assurance process
Gabriel ’whatsoever-bug exterminator’ Craciunescu (aka crazy), awesome talented developer and Calamares expert
The Infra Team for taking serious care of our website instances and security
The Artwork Team for the eye-catching details and the overall look & feel
and all our devoted high skilled developers.
Without them this magic would not have been possible.

We strongly recommend to backup your data and to perform a fresh install of the new operating system, to avoid any conflict with existing configuration settings.

As always, please read the Release Notes and the Errata.

Detailed information about this release can be found in OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 Release Notes
Our sources can be found on Github
Our main org:
OpenMandrivaSoftware
Our packaging org:
OpenMandrivaAssociation

Download at SourceForge:
Torrents

Checksums:

OpenMandrivaLx.4.0-plasma.znver1.iso
SHA1:
48c498f03a274ba56841ba63829824247f20c99b
MD5:
93d09af0714d57aee57af215a47f459f
OpenMandrivaLx.4.0-plasma.x86_64.iso	
SHA1:
59abd46d04a39bf71426cdaed21669c63de2fc99
MD5:
723b40135623ec3b735928169c64162c

If you want to help the project and support OpenMandriva, please consider making a donation.

OMLx 4.0 Desktop Cube effect
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OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 Plasma desktop
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OMLx 4.0 and OM Welcome
Welcome help the user with setting up the freshly installed system and get popular packages.
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OMLx 4.0 and KInfoCenter
KInfoCenter provides generic information about the system
OMLx 4.0 and Krita 4.2
Krita is a painting program, like Photoshop
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OMLx 4.0 and LibreOffice 6.2
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OMLx 4.0 and SMPlayer 19.5
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More screenshots
https://gallery.openmandriva.org/index.php?/category/31

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