OpenMandriva ROME 23.03 — ‘is the rolling release published by the OpenMandriva Association. ROME is designed for individual users and will have more up to date software‘. OpenMandriva had been using the fixed released model, but added the rolling release early in 2023. Have tested the fixed release OpenMandriva versions in the past, but now believe that I liked this rolling release version a little better.

Installation

I used Etcher to create the bootable USB. Their installation Guide suggests ‘ROSA-imagewriter, KDE isoimagewriter, SUSE Studio ImageWriter, dd command line‘ but I don’t use any of those — ‘n Etcher works.

I used the openmandriva.rome-23.03-plasma.x86_64.iso @ 2.58 GBs — select ROME > GET STARTED > ‘n download from either Mirror (sourceforge.net) or Torrent and direct (archive.org). I went wid SourceForge > ROME > 23.03.

Installation was fast ‘n easy w/o any issues.

Post Installation

OpenMandriva ROME 23.03 offers both the ‘Password Dependent‘ & the ‘Root‘ user options and I mostly used the root user option — I hate annoying “Authenticate” popups whilst I’m working, but did use the ‘Password Dependent‘ user section to test the OpenMandriva Control Center’s installation of a Nvidia latest production driver:

It also offered a Nvidia legacy driver option, but I didn’t test it. For the root user section, the OpenMandriva Control Center didn’t seem to work since it would not open when clicking on the app icon. No biggie, I used the Konsole terminal: dnf –refresh in nvidia –enablerepo=rolling-x86_64-non-free for latest driver.

Many Linux OSes are finally making it easier to install Nvidia drivers — tho I’m not sure what they do wid the AMD GPUs.

Here is the system’s About:

Here is the DE:

Conclusion

KDE Plasma was extremely easy to work wid, and I have noticed more ‘n more Distros tweaking their KDE versions to work easier — PLUS — KDE Plasma is so popular amongst many Linux users that a simple web search usually provides quick answer or solution to any questions that one might have.

Really a great job by the Developers on this Rolling release! I had no issues, and really enjoyed testing it.

For interested Windows users looking to test a Linux OS, here is a How to install OpenMandriva ROME 23.01 video:

Not 23.03 but the steps are the same ‘n is a good reference for a newbie.

This next video is about 31-minutes but has a lot of handy info — A First Look At OpenMandriva Lx 23.03 “ROME”:

That one offered a lot of info for a first time OpenMandriva user.