OpenMandriva ROME 26.09 Ships Linux 7.2, Plasma 6.7 and a New Gaming Stack

OpenMandriva has released new 26.09 installation images for ROME, its rolling-release Linux edition. The refresh uses Linux kernel 7.2 by default and updates the main KDE edition to Plasma 6.7.5, KDE Gear 26.08.1 and KDE Frameworks 6.29.

This is a rolling-distribution snapshot rather than a new fixed-support branch. Existing ROME users continue receiving packages through the normal rolling repositories, while the 26.09 images mainly give new installations a newer starting point.

For PC gaming, the snapshot bundles Wine 11.18 with WoW64 support, Proton 11, DXVK 3.0.2 and the vkd3d family alongside Mesa 26.2.3. The Steam installer in OpenMandriva's non-free repository is also updated. These versions make ROME 26.09 notable as a current Linux gaming baseline, but they do not establish that every Windows game will run or perform identically to Windows.

AMD users also get ROCm 10.0 with OpenMandriva patches intended to extend support to older Radeon hardware. Compatibility still depends on the GPU and workload rather than the presence of ROCm alone.

OpenMandriva says the open NVIDIA kernel module is now integrated directly into its kernel packaging. The practical goal is to reduce module-version mismatch problems after kernel updates. The proprietary NVIDIA driver remains available separately and is updated to version 610.57 in the snapshot.

The release also offers Clang- and GCC-built kernel variants, while the broader development stack moves to LLVM/Clang 23.1.2, GCC 16.2 and glibc 2.44.

ROME 26.09 adds snapd to the repositories, giving users Snap alongside the distribution's existing Flatpak and AppImage options. OpenMandriva still describes native RPM packages as its preferred format because they integrate directly with the distribution.

The release also moves to RPM 6.1, another substantial change in the underlying package-management stack.