News: openmamba ready to ship KDE Plasma 6 “mega-release”

After a period of packaging and testing openmamba is ready to ship the KDE Plasma 6 mega release upgrade to all users.

The next snapshots of livecd and livedvd live and installation media, which will be available within a couple of days, will already be provided with KDE Plasma 6.

In a few days the KDE Plasma 6 upgrade will be made available also to current installations of the openmamba rolling O.S. since several tests have shown that the upgrade process should be smooth for everybody.

After receiving and applying the upgrade the system needs to be rebooted. In some uncommon cases rebooting using the normal interface from the Plasma menu might not work, if you encounter this problem we suggest to close all running applications and issue a “sudo reboot” command from a terminal window.

Users using the default Plasma session will be automatically switched from X11 to Wayland graphical backend, which is now the default and recommended type of desktop session to use with KDE Plasma and openmamba.

Users can anticipate the upgrade by temporary enabling the “openmamba miscellaneous packages repository [unstable]” in discover Settings.

If you encounter any problem you may use the forum or the other openmamba support channels to ask for help.

Enjoy!

New: Git-based source repository and other news

openmamba provides a new web service on the src.openmamba.org site where the recipes (.spec files), patches and additional files representing the over 5500 source packages with which the distribution in format is created and maintained are easily consultable. tracks. The service, based on the Gitea platform, in addition to the RPMs also hosts openmamba’s internal projects.

Other activities completed in 2023:

  • the obsolete arm architecture (armel soft-fp) was abandoned to concentrate current and future developments on the two main architectures x86_64 and aarch64; the i586 (x86 32bit) architecture is still maintained in particular to provide the compatibility subsystem for 32-bit applications on installations for x86_64, used for example for Wine and the Steam video games platform;
  • last September the migration to a flat root filesystem hierarchy was completed, i.e. eliminating duplicates of the *bin and lib* folders in the root folder (/) and in /usr; this operation has caused some problems in the updates in various phases, however leading to greater maintainability and future stability of the systems successfully updated or installed from scratch after September 2023;
  • the constant maintenance and development by the sole maintainer in recent years has brought the distribution to an update level between 85 and 90% (repology) with stability, security and modernity benefits found on the Plasma and LXQt desktop targets;
  • the main repository of the rolling distribution has been renamed from devel to base.

In the next future:

  • the KDE Plasma environment will need to be updated to be based on Qt6 following the upstream schedule;
  • the new package management on src.openmamba.org opens up renewed possibilities for collaborative development also considering that the platform provides functionality for each package for reporting problems, for drafting documentation in Wiki format and for managing Pull Requests; the currently centralized development mechanisms based on the webbuild interface and the autospec and autodist layers could be enhanced using tools such as tito and mock; at the moment there are no precise plans and these developments will depend on any interest and availability found.

Happy 2024 wishes.

Silvan

 

News: support for 64-bit ARM architecture (and Raspberry Pi 4)

openmamba is now available for the aarch64 (aka arm64) architecture, which is added to the x86_64, i586 e arm (armel) supported architectures.

This makes openmamba potentially compatible with present and future devices based on 64-bit ARM architecture that have a standard GNU/Linux kernel.

At the same time the openmamba rolling diskimg-raspberrypi for aarch64 image file is available for download, ready to be flashed on a microSD and used with a Raspberry Pi 4 (and technically also with Raspberry Pi 3). The image provides the LXQt desktop environment with support for automatic partition resizing on first boot. Production of the image file that the KDE Plasma environment provides will follow shortly.

Advanced users can use the rootfs-base and rootfs-light for aarch64 images (and soon rootfs) by installing a suitable kernel to run all variants of openmamba on other 64-bit ARM-based devices.

The porting of the applications is still in progress and I invite users to write in the forum in case you need that particular applications are made available for aarch64 with higher priority.

Silvan

openmamba “light” with LXQt desktop

The “light” version of openmamba is renewed by adopting the LXQt desktop environment which replaces the previous LXDE environment.

Meanwhile, the main release continues to provide users with an always up-to-date KDE Plasma desktop environment.

In the Downloads section all the supports are available to run in live mode and install openmamba on PCs (64 and 32 bit x86 compatible archs):

openmamba livecd rolling – ISO for live execution and installation of openmamba with KDE Plasma environment

openmamba livecd-light rolling – ISO for live execution and installation of openmamba with LXQt environment

openmamba livedvd rolling – ISO image recommended for installations in languages ​​other than Italian and English

In the Download section other formats are also available to allow direct installation on USB key (diskimg), manual (rootfs) and for RaspberryPi.

openmamba: subsystem updated to RPM 4 and DNF

After a period of development and testing, the openmamba software packages management and update subsystem has been updated and rebased on version 4 of the RPM manger package using DNF (which replaces YUM) for managing system updates.

With this important change openmamba aligns with the main distributions of the Linux o.s. based on RPM implementing a convergent and maintained solution and thus overcoming some problems, among which the main for the user was the impossibility of making updates using applets and graphical desktop interfaces.

Current installations will be updated to the new subsystem by running (for the last time) the `sudo yum update` command from the terminal. In case of problems after the update, I invite you to write or search for information in the openmamba website forum.

Live and installation media will be available with the new subsystem as they are automatically regenerated, ie with a date equal to or later than 07/21/2019.

openmamba makes available to anyone interested a desktop operating system based on the most recent versions of KDE Plasma and the main applications trying to provide an experience that is always in step with the times. With the news announced today, the prospect for the near future is that openmamba can improve further and faster.

Silvan

openmamba returns to have a single maintainer

From this year the maintenance and development of openmamba have resumed a pace equal if not higher than in previous years. Working with continuity I have producted a substantial modernization of the package base of the rolling version of the distribution and updated and verified the media for installation and live use (livedvd, livecd, etc.).

Seen my renewed possibilities to return to work on openmamba with continuity and focus and having ideas to make improvements in the present and near future, I asked to be able to resume the complete management of the project and overcome the current management divided between coordinators of the areas of communication, development, documentation and testing and graphics. The coordinators have welcomed my will by renewing their willingness to collaborate and contribute to the project as much as they can.

First of all I would like to thank Andrea Martina for starting the #restart process of openmamba after a difficult transition at the beginning of 2017 that had led the undersigned to announce the closure of the project.

Thanks to Ercole Carpanetto and Federico Bottero for making themselves available and participating as coordinators and to all those who have given their support in any way demonstrating their interest in this project.

The activities currently will continue on the development and improvement of the rolling version of openmamba.

See you soon,
Silvan Calarco

#RESTART OPENMAMBA!

The openmamba project, after the previous announcement, is back up and under development.

Thanks to the interest of many users it was possible to restart reviewing its organization and development processes.

Now, under the expert guide of the team leader Silvan Calarco, four work groups have been constituted: communication and promotion, testing and documentation, technical development and graphical contents.

Each area has its own coordinator which is responsible to organize the work with people who want to collaborate.

This new management will allow to make plans for the future while maintaining the project peculiarities on stability, simplicity and independence.

This is only a first step: openmamba is a singular project in the italian scene of GNU/Linux distributions, exclusively based on the commitment of voluntary people and in order to grow up more it needs new users willing to use, test and take part to the project. This is why we will be pleased to welcome new forces.

We want to say thanks to all the people who made themselves available so that all this happened.

Silvan Calarco
Ercole Carpanetto
Federico Gottero
Andrea Martina

*** openmamba END OF LIFE announcement ***

The openmamba project officially closes after ten years of life.

Website, services and repositories will continue to be available for an indeterminate period.

The maintainer and founder of the project wishes to thank all the people that in the years have supported and believed in this project.

S.C.

openmamba milestone4 (beta) and rolling updates

The development of the rolling distribution of openmamba keeps going since the release of the openmamba milestone3. It’s time to give some updates:

milestone4

milestone4 release enters a beta phase. Packages repositories of this milestone release are available and will be synchronized periodically with upstream repositories of the rolling release until it will be released as stable. Advanced users of the milestone3 release may upgrade their own systems using the openmamba-dist-upgrade script by entering the following command in a terminal window:

sudo openmamba-dist-upgrade milestone4

It is also possible to update your milestone3 installation to rolling using this command instead:

sudo openmamba-dist-upgrade rolling

For new installations we recommend to use the rolling release installation media. After the installation it will be possible to switch to milestone4 release by entering the following commands in a terminal:

sudo smart remove openmamba-devel
sudo smart channel –disable devel devel-games
sudo smart channel –enable milestone4 milestone4-updates

KDE 5

The popular graphical environment on which openmamba default desktop is based has been completely updated to release 5 by recently finishing the update of PIM components (email, calendars and other personal information).

milestone4 release ships with the classic KDE Workspace environment in order to give continuity to users upgrading from the milestone3 release. To accomplish this many internal aspects have been worked on to ensure that the update will keep user configurations of KDE parts unchanged.

The new KDE Plasma 5 environment will be a feature of the next milestone5 release.

x2go

Users of milestone4 or rolling releases may use x2go as a performing solution for remote desktop management of desktop and server installations of openmamba (as well as other Linux based distributions). On the PC/Server you want to control the package to install is x2goserver, while the package to be installed on clients is called x2goclient.

Telegram

The desktop version of the popular instant messaging client has been available for months to rolling release users. To use it is necessary to install the package named telegram.

There is also a Telegram bot for openmamba users and developers. This bot, in beta release, lets the users get information on openmamba available packages in an easy and fast way. Furthermore, openmamba developers using the webbuild development environment will also find useful notification functions of the state of build processes.

Flash e Pepper-Flash

Adobe recently started maintaining again the NPAPI version of the Linux Flash plugin  (for browsers like Firefox) which is in sync with the PPAPI version (for Chromium browser), for 32 and 64 bit Intel compatible systems. Installation and update to the latest versions of both plugins are internally managed by openmamba and is available in all the versions including and following the milestone3.

KDE Connect

KDE Connect is an useful component for the integration of KDE desktop with Smartphone devices. The package to install on your milestone4/rolling desktop client is called kdeconnect4.

milestone5 and beyond

The evolution of the o.s. keeps going on naturally by continuosly producing updates of many of the thousands of components. In addition to this the maintainer (who is writing this post) keeps managing the most important parts of the whole project with as much effort as possible.

Some possible objectives of the milestone5 release will be: updating predefined desktop to KDE Plasma 5, support for the arm gnueabihf (Hard Floating point) architecture.

openmamba can get better by getting users feedback and thanks to the collaboration of developers and partners who can take in charge any of the many things to manage. Anybody interested into helping this project is welcome and can use the forum or the other available channels to start.

Special thanks to all the people who collaborate and collaborated to this project.

Happy holidays from openmamba!

 

openmamba milestone3

After some months in pre-release state, installation media of the milestone3 stable version are available for download with release 3.0.1.

Users of existing pre-release milestone3 installations have already received system updates, while those who want to make new installations or use milestone3 as a “live” system, can use recent downloadable media (livedvd, livecd, diskimg-livecd, livecd-light).