After several years of development after the previous significant release (nearly three years), the next release of OpenMandriva is Lx 4.0. The distribution has been developed by the community since 2012, after Mandriva SA abandoned further development. The new name was chosen by user vote, because. the company refused to transfer the rights to the former name.
Today, the hallmark of OpenMandriva is the use of LLVM/clang, with an emphasis on a high level of optimization for all system components. It includes many applications specifically designed for OpenMandriva (OM), and significant work is being done to improve support for specific hardware platforms and individual device lines. In addition to the classic installation, special options for live operation are also offered. The default is the KDE graphical environment and systemd tools.
In the release, as planned, the transition to RPMv4 was made in conjunction with DNF and Dnfdragora. Previously RPMv5, urpmi and rpmdrake's GUI were the basis. The migration is due to the fact that the new tool stack is supported by Red Hat. RPMv4 is also used in the vast majority of rpm distributions. In turn, RPMv5 has not been developed much in the last decade.
Other significant changes and updates:
- KDE Plasma updated to 5.15.5 (with Frameworks 5.58 and Applications 19.04.2, Qt 5.12.3);
- LibreOffice is fully integrated with Plasma, providing the user with familiar system dialogs and an improved look and feel;
- Falkon, the KDE web browser that uses the same rendering engine as Chromium, is now the default browser, reducing memory usage and providing a more consistent user experience;
- Because a number of problematic MP3 patents expired between Lx releases 3 and 4, MP3 decoders and encoders are now included in the main distribution. Video and audio players have also been updated.
Applications under the OpenMandriva brand:
- OM Welcome has been seriously updated;
- OM Control Center is now included in the main distribution and replaces the legacy DrakX tools;
- OM Repository Management Tool (om-repo-picker) - a tool for working with repositories and DNF packages is also included in the main package.
Live mode:
- Updated menu for language selection and keyboard settings;
- At the request of users, KPatience card games are included in the live image;
- New features have been added to the Calamares setter:
- Improved options for working with disk partitions;
- The Calamares log is now copied to a successfully installed system;
- All unused languages are removed at the end of the installation;
- Calamares now checks if the system is installed in VirtualBox or real hardware. On real hardware, unnecessary packages for virtualbox are removed;
- The live image includes, besides om-repo-picker and Dnfdragora, a GUI for the package manager, a replacement for the old rpmdrake;
- Available Kuser - a tool for managing users and groups, replacing the old userdrake;
- Changed draksnapshot to KBackup - a tool for backing up directories or files;
- The live image also includes the OpenMandriva Control Center and the OpenMandriva Repository Management Tool.
Development tools:
- RPM upgrade to version 4, DNF package manager is used as software package manager;
- The core C/C++ toolset is now built on top of clang 8.0, glibc 2.29 and binutils 2.32, with new wrappers that allow 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.
- Python has been updated to 3.7.3, Python 2.x dependencies have been removed from the main install image (Python 2 is still available in the repositories for people who need legacy applications for now);
- Perl, Rust and Go have also been updated to their current versions;
- All important libraries have been updated to current versions (eg Boost 1.70, poppler 0.76);
- The kernel has been updated to version 5.1.9 with additional performance improvements. The 5.2-rc4 kernel is also available in the repositories for testing.
Versions of some packages:
- systemd 242
- LibreOffice 6.2.4
- Firefox Quantum 66.0.5
- Krita 4.2.1
- DigiKam 6.0
- Xorg 1.20.4, Mesa 19.1.0
- Squid 3.2.7
Hardware support has been significantly improved. In addition to the normal driver update cycle (including the Mesa 19.1.0 graphics stack), OMLx 4.0 now includes full ports for the aarch64 and armv7hnl platforms. A RISC-V port is also in the works, but not yet ready for release. Versions have also been created specifically for current AMD processors (Ryzen, ThreadRipper, EPYC) that outperform the generic version by taking advantage of the new features in those processors (this build will not run on generic x86_64 processors).
Attention! The developers do not recommend updating existing OpenMandriva installations, as the changes are too significant. It is suggested that you back up your existing data and perform a clean install of OMLx 4.0.
Source: linux.org.ru