I haven't abandoned OpenRGB. It might seem that way given the last "stable" release was in 2023, but rest assured 1.0 is on the horizon still. I originally intended to release 1.0 last year shortly after 1.0rc1, but external setbacks pushed it back, namely WinRing0 being taken down by Windows Defender and Qt5 reaching EOL. However, after putting out those fires I decided I was not happy releasing 1.0 in its current state. Several other developers had open concerns about the backend and about rough edges in the user experience, and more issues came to light after 1.0rc2 in September.

Moving to a client/service architecture on Windows was desired to get around PawnIO's need to run as admin, but significant parts of the user interface (settings and profiles mainly) were not made to work with the SDK server.

This led to the creation of the next branch, a separate branch where I have been doing some major user-facing as well as backend changes. Notable big changes are below.

• Update to Plugin API v5 and SDK Protocol v6
• New profile system that properly integrates plugin settings into OpenRGB profiles
• Settings and profile sync with background service
• USB HID device hotplugging
• Dynamic list updates
• Per-Zone Modes
• Lots of potential crashes mitigated by backend cleanups, protocol improvements, and better definition of plugin interfaces

For more detail, see this merge request:

https://gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB/-/merge_requests/2935

You can also download pipeline builds there to test, and -next-git AUR packages are available for testing as well on Arch based distros.