OpenMandriva ROME 26.09: Fresh Images After a Rough Stretch
OpenMandriva has released ROME 26.09, a set of refreshed installation images for its rolling-release edition. The last ROME release was a while ago. The team names three reasons: lack of time, an attempted sabotage aimed at damaging the distribution, and technical problems. Rolling-release users kept receiving updates during the gap, but the installation images are only now being replaced after extensive testing.
malloc, PGO, and LTO
The glibc in ROME 26.09 supports interchangeable malloc implementations. Picking the right one can improve performance by up to 20 percent. This release ships the infrastructure; future releases will configure optimal malloc implementations for selected key applications automatically.
The package manager moves to RPM 6.1.0. OpenMandriva extended it with a new optional %pgo section in spec files that makes Profile-Guided Optimization easier to apply. A number of packages already use it, and nearly all packages are built with LTO enabled. The default compiler is now LLVM/Clang 23, with GCC 16.2.0 available alongside. A clash between compiler-rt and libgcc_s that could crash some applications has been fixed.
Desktops and Browsers
Plasma 6.7.5, KDE Gear 26.08.1, GNOME 50.3, Xfce 4.20.x, and LXQt 2.4.0 ship in this release. MATE 1.28 gained bug fixes and an experimental Wayland session. Updated window managers include Hyprland 0.56.2, COSMIC 1.7.0, niri, sway 1.12, i3 4.25.1, and IceWM 4.1.0.
The Helium browser replaces ungoogled-chromium as the default in the Plasma and LXQt editions. Helium is based on ungoogled-chromium but restores some functionality that was removed during the de-Googling process, while staying spyware-free. OpenMandriva also ported CEF to use Helium as its engine, which means OBS Studio now supports a CEF plugin based on it.
Snap Support
OpenMandriva now supports Snap alongside Flatpak and AppImage. Installation:
sudo dnf install snapd
sudo systemctl enable --now snapd
The team still recommends native packages as the first choice. Their argument: native packages mean less duplication and better integration, and a fix in libpng reaches every application that uses it. Snap support gives users the option, nothing more.
AI Tooling and Gaming
The repositories carry updated AI applications: llama-cpp 0.4.1, ollama 0.34.3, whisper-cpp 1.9.4, koboldcpp, stable-diffusion.cpp, ComfyUI, and more. Many of them use the system-wide GGML 0.24.0 with GPU support through ROCm, Vulkan, or OpenCL. ROCm was fixed and updated to 10.0.0, with patches to run on older Radeon GPUs.
For gaming, the Steam installer is updated, Proton 11.0 is in the non-free repository alongside proton-experimental and bleeding-edge versions, and the stack includes DXVK 3.0.2, vkd3d 2.0, and WINE 11.18 with WoW64 support.
Kernel and NVIDIA
The kernel is at 7.2.7, with a 7.3.0-rc4 kernel-rc available. All kernels come in a Clang-built default version and a separate GCC-built variant. The open NVIDIA kernel module has moved directly into the kernel package, so it no longer falls out of sync with kernel updates. The proprietary driver is at 610.57.04, and the open module does not support older GPUs like Volta or Turing.
Known Issues
The Cosmic installation image was not released with 26.09 due to a login manager problem. Existing Cosmic users can update normally, and new users can install it from the repository. OM-Welcome may crash under Plasma X11 on some NVIDIA configurations, and the Wayland LiveISO can show a black screen in VirtualBox unless the graphics controller is set to VMSVGA.
Download
Installation images are available on SourceForge, with Plasma X11 and Wayland editions, a GNOME Wayland edition, and community spins for LXQt, MATE, and Xfce. The x86_64 images come in a generic build and a znver build optimized for AMD Ryzen processors. For aarch64, only a server image is currently provided. Docker images are on Docker Hub.