OpenMandriva ROME 26.09 is here, and this is a pretty substantial update for the rolling-release Linux distribution. It has also been a long time coming.
The OpenMandriva team acknowledges the unusually long gap between ROME installation images, blaming a combination of limited time, technical problems, and what it describes as an attempted sabotage of the distribution. Existing ROME users have continued receiving rolling updates, but the new release finally gives fresh installs a much more current starting point.
ROME 26.09 ships with Linux kernel 7.2.7, while kernel 7.3.0-rc4 is available for people who want to live a little more dangerously. OpenMandriva continues to compile its standard kernel with Clang, while a separate GCC version remains available.
LLVM/Clang 23.1.2 is now the default compiler, with GCC 16.2.0 available too. RPM has moved to version 6.1.0, and OpenMandriva added support for an optional %pgo section in spec files to make Profile-Guided Optimization easier for package maintainers. The project says almost all of its packages are also built with Link-Time Optimization.
There is some potentially interesting performance work happening in glibc too. OpenMandriva has added infrastructure for interchangeable malloc implementations, with the team claiming that choosing the right implementation can improve performance by as much as 20 percent. Those automatic optimizations are planned for future releases, though, so don’t expect ROME 26.09 to suddenly make every computer 20 percent faster.
Desktop users have plenty of choices. KDE Plasma is up to 6.7.5, GNOME reaches 50.3, Xfce is on the 4.20 series, and LXQt moves to 2.4.0. MATE 1.28 now has an experimental Wayland session as well.
OpenMandriva also offers Hyprland, COSMIC, Niri, Sway, i3, IceWM, Qtile, Labwc, and several other environments and window managers through its repositories. Unfortunately, there is no new COSMIC installation image this time because of an issue with its login manager. Existing COSMIC users can still update, while newcomers can install it manually from the repositories.
One of my favorite parts of this release is just how much local AI software OpenMandriva is making readily available. Its repositories include Ollama, llama.cpp, Whisper.cpp, KoboldCpp, Hermes Agent, OpenCode, Aider, Goose, Stable Diffusion.cpp, and ComfyUI.
Many of these applications use OpenMandriva’s system-wide GGML package with GPU acceleration through ROCm, Vulkan, or OpenCL. ROCm itself has moved to version 10.0.0, and the developers have added patches intended to extend support to older Radeon GPUs.
I like seeing a Linux distribution make local AI tools this accessible. Running models on your own hardware isn’t always the easiest thing to set up, and having software such as Ollama and llama.cpp sitting in the normal repositories removes at least some of that friction. It also gives users another option besides immediately handing their data to a cloud AI service.
NVIDIA users get a welcome change too. OpenMandriva has moved the open NVIDIA kernel module directly into the kernel, which should prevent it from falling out of sync after kernel updates. The proprietary NVIDIA driver has also been updated to version 610.57.04 for hardware that still needs it.
Perhaps surprisingly, ROME 26.09 adds support for Canonical’s Snap format. That puts Snap alongside Flatpak and AppImage, although OpenMandriva isn’t abandoning traditional Linux packaging. The developers still recommend native packages whenever possible, arguing that they reduce duplication and integrate better with the operating system.
There is also a new default browser for the Plasma and LXQt editions. Helium replaces ungoogled-chromium and is itself based on that project, but restores some functionality that was stripped out during the de-Googling process. OpenMandriva describes Helium as open and spyware-free.
The project has gone a little further than simply bundling the browser. It ported Chromium Embedded Framework to use Helium as its engine, allowing OBS Studio to use a Helium-based CEF plugin.
Gamers aren’t forgotten either. ROME includes updated Steam support alongside Proton 11-based builds, DXVK 3.0.2, VKD3D, and Wine 11.18 with WoW64 support. Mesa has moved to 26.2.3, while PipeWire is now at 1.6.9.
The wider application stack includes Firefox 156, Thunderbird 155, LibreOffice 26.8, Audacity 4.0, Blender 5.2.2, GIMP 3.2.4, OBS Studio 32.2.2, and VLC 3.0.24. Krita 6.0.4 has moved to Qt6 and can use AI plugins available directly from OpenMandriva’s repositories.
As you might expect from a rolling Linux distribution, there are a few known problems. Some NVIDIA configurations can cause OM-Welcome to crash under Plasma X11, while the Wayland live image may display a black screen in VirtualBox unless its graphics controller is changed to VMSVGA.
OpenMandriva ROME has never been the Linux distribution everyone talks about, but 26.09 gives enthusiasts plenty of reasons to take another look. Between Linux kernel 7.2, an enormous selection of desktops, better NVIDIA handling, performance-focused compiler work, and an increasingly interesting collection of local AI tools, there is a lot here to play with.
And after such a long wait for refreshed installation media, hopefully OpenMandriva can make good on its promise of a more regular release cycle going forward.
Support independent tech journalism
NERDS.xyz is independently owned and operated. If you enjoy my coverage of Linux, AI, hardware, cybersecurity, and tech culture, consider supporting the site on Ko-fi.
Support NERDS.xyz
