Today, there is some great news for the Linux community -- OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 is RC now available! Yes, there is a new version of the KDE-focused Linux distribution.

Before you get too excited, please know that RC stands for "Release Candidate." What does that mean? Well, it should be more stable than an Alpha or Beta, but it is still pre-release software. Essentially, with an RC, the developers are proposing that this version could be stable enough to become "final" or "gold."

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As with OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 before it, version 4.1 comes with the open source Fakon web browser by default. Don't worry though -- both Firefox and Chromium are available for installation from the official repositories. There are some other great programs in the repos too, such as Thunderbird, GIMP, and Virtualbox. LibreOffice comes pre-installed, thankfully.

The developers share several of the important package updates below.

Kernel 5.5.0

Qt Framework 5.14.0

KDE Plasma Desktop 5.17.5, KDE Frameworks 5.66.0, KDE Applications 19.12.1

LLVM/clang 9.0.1

Java 13

LibreOffice 6.4.0.1

Falkon 3.1.0

Krita 4.2.8

Kdenlive 19.12.1

SMPlayer 19.10.2

DigiKam 7.0.0

SimpleScreenRecorder 0.3.11

NX Firewall

If you want to give OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 RC a try, you can download the ISO here. While it should be very stable at this point, keep in mind, there could be some serious bugs that might result in data loss. If you aren't comfortable with that, you should sit the RC out and wait for the final version.

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