I HAVE tried it. Consider it a "convenience image". It includes some of the popular apps that have shown up on the lists and feeds. It includes fixes and scripts that folks have come up with, but haven't made it (or will never make it) to mainstream OM.
Effectively what you get is OM 2008.8 with the above addons that save time having to configure everything to work. It's not a fork, though it does have some additions that apparently will not make it to OM (such as Raster's keyboard).