OpenMandriva developers today formally announced the release of their rolling-release OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 Linux OS installation images, which are also being treated as a release candidate for the OMLx 5.0 non-rolling distribution variant. Making OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 more exciting is that they are now offering separate install media as well that features the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment in its current experimental state but is being offered by OpenMandriva as a "technical preview" around the future direction of the desktop.

OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 features a Linux 6.4-based kernel built using the Clang compiler (OpenMandriva continues using Clang much more commonly than other Linux distributions), KDE Plasma 5.27.7 and other modern KDE/KF5 components, LLVM/Clang 16.0.6 is the default compiler, OpenMandriva's Chromium browser build has patched in JPEG-XL support, and there is a wide variety of other package updates.

OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 continues to be offered in both x86_64 and Zen1 images. OpenMandriva is unique in that it offers its packages compiled specifically for AMD Zen CPUs with the appropriate "zen1" compiler targeting and newer as an alternative to generic x86_64 packages.

Downloads and more details on the OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 release via OpenMandriva.org .