8 ms·

Rhino Linux is a rolling release Ubuntu-based distribution

73 points by sacrosanct 3y ago

IronWolve 3y ago
Point releases for android and linux is really a pita. Even windows is a rolling release, win11 keeps getting updates without a reinstall.
- Johnny555 3y ago
  I've never done a reinstall to upgrade Ubuntu for point releases and even major releases, I just run do-release-upgrade when I want to upgrade.
  - RussianCow 3y ago
    I haven't used Ubuntu in a few years now, but anecdotally, do-release-upgrade has failed on me more times than I can count (in both server and desktop environments).
    - creeble 3y ago
      Indeed, I no longer use do-release-upgrade and instead find it "easier" to install the new release from scratch and copy my ~user and other backups over. It's a PITA (have to install all the packages I had on old version), but I have scripts that mostly do it all for me now. If you've ever lived through a do-release-upgrade for mysql, you'll probably never do it again.
  - cbsks 3y ago
    I did that only yesterday to upgrade from 22.04 LTS to 22.10, and now my laptop doesn’t boot. So it doesn’t always work. I am strongly considering trying Arch instead.
  - oldandboring 3y ago
    Our experiences are different. Before I switched away to a rolling release distro (Manjaro) a couple years ago, I used Ubuntu and would perform the upgrades from one Ubuntu point release to the next. My success rate (something either moderately or critically not working after the upgrade) over those last couple years was probably about 25%. Always needed to wipe clean and reinstall, restore from backup. Tons of lost productivity. All that stopped when I went to the rolling release.
  - Espionage724 3y ago
    I've heard too many horror-stories of major OS upgrades and even service packs back in XP and Vista days. New distro versions for me equals a clean state to make sure everything goes smoothly :p I have commands and notes that let me re-deploy within an hour on most distros, like these for Fedora: https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/distros:fedora_workstation_gnome https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/distros:fedora_workstation...
bravetraveler 3y ago
That's... interesting. I avoid Ubuntu largely due to the age of things -- I'm someone who prefers Fedora/Arch, closer to the 'edge'. Apt is another part of it, but honestly Debian seems to 'feel' better. Perhaps due to the packaging? Anyway, I'll probably try this out. Say I wanted to take Canonical out, does anyone here have anything to say for Debian Unstable?
- xtracto 3y ago
  I used to be a RPM based distro user back in the day before `yum` existed. The RPM dependency hell left me PTSD and using `apt` was a breath of fresh air. Nowadays I only use `yum` in Amazon based instances and for the normal day to day stuff I don't see any difference.
  - bravetraveler 3y ago
    Totally understandable. I used up2date, too. It's pretty subtle. Ubuntu packages, maybe not all DEBs, like to prompt for input on how to proceed with new configs. For servers at scale with varying packages, levels, and requirements - this gets painful. Some config hackery can help, but creates a bit of a circular problem. RPM systems (by default) will trust the administrator. They don't prompt, and provide the new config file as a reference - without messing with what's already been deployed. Apt also likes to get hamstrung on previous transactions. If they broke for the reason I just mentioned [or any other], installing new/completely unrelated things is blocked. I can pretty much trust my RPM systems to do what they want/have been told... but not the DEB. Granted, my experience with DEB has mostly been limited to Ubuntu - so it could be that/Canonical.
    - ftaghn 3y ago
      > Granted, my experience with DEB has mostly been limited to Ubuntu - so it could be that/Canonical. It is not a Canonical specificity, but it is overridable behavior. For the dpkg prompting on configuration file changes: https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/ https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-config... > You can also make those options permanent by creating /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/local: > Dpkg::Options { > "--force-confdef"; > "--force-confold"; > } Along with invoking apt with -y (assume yes) will get you close to the behavior you seek. Or as a permanent setting: APT::Get::Assume-Yes "true";
suslik 3y ago
I wonder - why isn't Arch the one distro to rule them all - especially if we talk about rolling release? I was distro hoping since 2008 - Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Centos, Fedora, Mint, Slack - you name it. When I found Arch, after a couple of months I knew it was over. It really "just works" in the best sence.
- hexfish 3y ago
  Because in most enterprise environments it's a welcome property to keep security updates separate from feature updates, which is not something rolling distro's provide, as they just follow upstream as fast as possible. Say my enterprise application is built upon the API (in an abstract sense, if you will) of package xyz, version 1.0. And then xyz, version 2.0 comes out. I would have to rebuild my enterprise application to be compatible with API 2 and I don't have the resources nor the incentive for that because I don't need API 2. Then a vulnerability gets reported in both xyz version 1.0 and 2.0 but xyz's maintainers only patch 2.0 (as 2.0.1). In that case I am very happy that non-rolling (enterprisey) distro's like Ubuntu, CentOS, Redhat etc backport that security patch so I can keep running xyz version 1 (or rather 1.0.0-1 or something like that). Where most rolling distro's would just 'force' you to upgrade to 2.0.1. Hope my explanation makes sense.
  - antioedipus 3y ago
    First of all, many rolling release distros don’t follow upstream as fast as possible—there’s often some testing window. People go on and on about backported security patches and stability, but I’ve had to handle so many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported fix that I now think this is basically a fantasy. The distro maintainers just don’t have the time (or experience with all the software they ship!) to backport patches for every single issue. I’d really rather get a fix by the actual software maintainer than a year-old mystery meat version that still has a bunch of known non security bugs fixed in upstream that the distro maintainers don’t care about. Even worse, being able to stay on essentially outdated software puts a lot of organizations into a tough spot when their LTS version finally becomes unsupported. Practice makes perfect, and I think lots of small, regular updates result in a lot less pain than a mega-update every few years (really: I’ve had to manage one of these more than once, and it’s a total nightmare figuring out which of 1000 changes in the new LTS version caused a performance regression or something).
umvi 3y ago
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is also a great rolling release distro. For anyone that's never tried rolling release, the main benefit is that it keeps your tools/libs/kernel updated with the latest upstream. If you use Ubuntu (for example) it ships with some python version (say 3.8), and then it will almost never update again unless you manually install a newer python version or update Ubuntu itself to the next release (which might not exist). With something like Tumbleweed (or Rhino in this case), updates come out every few days, and every time you do an update you'll find python is now on 3.10, then 3.11, etc. It's really nice when every compiler/language is on the latest version by default.
- ripley12 3y ago
  > the main benefit is that it keeps your tools/libs updated with the latest. For tools you want to be on the latest version of, why not use a package manager like homebrew that isn't tied to your distro? I've never understood the Linux culture of tightly coupling OS and package management (and so I use brew even on Linux), but I seem to be in the minority.
  - bravetraveler 3y ago
    A distribution is a collection of software - if reduced to a certain point, the identity is lost! It makes sense to me for a distribution to find commonly wanted software, package it up, and make it available. There's tailoring to consider! Some go further and introduce patches. Not every distribution is as good at both contributing and being accepted upstream. Now, if you want something newer, then you're obviously welcome to acquire that as you see fit. The distribution will help with that, too -- providing build utils, headers, etc. Enabling third party repositories, ie: PPA/COPR There are also runtimes to avoid building; Flatpak/Snap, Docker/Podman, etc. Though, these also lose some of the 'distribution spirit'
    - ripley12 3y ago
      This is a really good answer, thank you.
  - 3y ago
bee_rider 3y ago
How does one make a point-release distro into a rolling one? A distro is a repo and configuration (and, of course, the community that grows around it, but that’s sort of ephemeral). So, if they are doing rolling release, they must not be using Ubuntu’s repos… what do they use? Anyway, this is not to poo-poo a new rolling release distro; the more the merrier. I think people are waking up to the fact that rolling, with fewer moving parts per update, is the best way to get stability. Debugging effort grows like O(2^n) where n is the number of packages updated.
- gravitate 3y ago
  Vanilla OS is great too: https://vanillaos.org/ https://vanillaos.org/ The unique selling point is its immutability as described here: https://documentation.vanillaos.org/docs/almost/ https://documentation.vanillaos.org/docs/almost/ > Immutability is meant to be used as a safety measure to prevent accidental changes to the system, so it should be kept enabled most of the time.
  - Espionage724 3y ago
    It seems easier to just fix my system instead of trying to prevent breaking it :p I don't know what an accidental change is, but if I want to change something I'm going to change it and likely tear through immutability anyway. I can go back to Windows if I want to be limited in what I can change :p
- beanjuiceII 3y ago
  just go with it, this is what we do in linux distro land, it doesn't have to make sense. It just has to sound cool when i tell someone what distro i've moved to for the 3rd time this week
- tamimio 3y ago
  All linux users go through distro-hopping phase at some point after passing the first intro phase, I did back in 2007 too, but then you realize that whatever get the job done it will be your daily driver. In the past 6 years my main one is Mint, and it’s stable and overall good and let me focus on the stuff I do on the OS not the OS itself, so I’m sticking with that.
award_ 3y ago
Seems like a good project, but I'm not sure why I would choose this over something like Debian Sid though?
- vesinisa 3y ago
  How does the stability of Sid compare to an actual rolling release type distro like Arch?
  - dima55 3y ago
    I've used sid on my machines for decades, as have many other people. Works great. It's not an official "release" in that it's not all tested together, but neither is Arch, really.
    - whalesalad 3y ago
      i'd imagine sid is far more stable than arch, but that is just my anecdotal experience. plus ... ubuntu is debian. can't rly imagine why you'd want to base a new distro that is debian-based on something other than debian. arch is a cool distro that I definitely respect, but I don't think it is appropriate to use for a workstation that you need unless you are on a filesystem that will do snapshots before package updates such that you can easily rollback. ie btrfs/zypper.
  - Daegalus 3y ago
    From my experience, its much more stable. Sid is "unstable" by Debian's definition, but Debian's definition of Stable is a lot more intense than most other distros. If you want a little more stability but still rolling release, do Debian Testing. Packages are only really delayed by 2-10 days (except during release windows where they do branching). The only criteria for something getting into Testing is that it passes all tests while in Sid for multiple or all supported platforms. But overall, Sid is fairly rock solid. If anything I think Rhino Linux should have taken Debian Sid or Testing as a source, adding all the niceties/desktop/sane defaults of Ubuntu that they like. and released that.
elromulous 3y ago
This! I've needed a rolling Ubuntu for so many things. Ubuntu is basically the "default" distro in many places, and pushing out upgrades via a new image or some big bang upgrade was a lot more painful than having a rolling updates.
ramesh31 3y ago
I'm so happy that XFCE is still a thing. I remember using Xubuntu as my daily driver through the nightmare years of Windows 8 Metro and it was a dream come true.
creeble 3y ago
I don't get what's "Ubuntu-based" about Rhino? It uses XFCE, and Pacstall for package management, which to me makes it utterly unlike Ubuntu.
- yoyohello13 3y ago
  It uses the Ubuntu package Repos. That’s generally what <distro>-based means in the Linux world.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    Hard disagree. Distro based is normally based on foo being a fork of bar either once or periodically rebasing on parent. Merely consuming the same packages is insufficient.
djha-skin 3y ago
I'm very excited for this, but I find it odd that an OS that focuses on the bleeding edge uses a non-wayland desktop framework as its default. The most anticipated software I'm waiting to have drop in 24.04 is kde+wayland.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
Every linux distribution, IMO, has a sweet spot niche. You run Arch if you want that critical mass of bleeding edge community support/maintenance. Fedora for a pre release RHEL. Clear Linux for absolute x86 performance. Immutable distros like Kionite or SteamOS for focused tasks and stability. Gentoo for embedded stuff or weird patches. Mint for an old (but stable) base. And you run Ubuntu because it is default linux. Its what you have to deal with on your cloud instance or work server or whatever. It is possibly the only thing some specific software you want is packaged/tested on. So Rhino linux is... Ubuntu, but rolling? If it actually works with Ubuntu targeted packages, thats pretty cool, as it would take tons pain out of Ubuntu.
- Espionage724 3y ago
  openSUSE Tumbleweed makes more sense for rolling imo and was even more up-to-date than Arch at times with major DE versions and kernels. And openSUSE like most other mainstream distros doesn't require an encyclopedia to install :p Fedora is probably the most secure server OS you can get; can't beat SELinux, and nobody else implements it besides Fedora and RHEL. I personally see no point to Mint since Ubuntu exists, and Mint has had their own share of specific issues one being that Wine didn't work for some months. The rep I got from them in the past was that they mixed their own, Debian, and Ubuntu packages in their default repos that occasionally caused dependency issues. Maybe it's not that bad, but Ubuntu is still around and a lot more supported. Ubuntu is the distro. It's popular, it looks good (not the boring grey/white Adwaita theme), and can handle multimedia without having to involve any 3rd-party repos. I'd recommend it to beginners today, and I'd probably be using it as a desktop OS still but I like consistency and my home lab is Fedora :p I have zero interest in Rhino Linux. I don't have issue with Ubuntu's update procedures and trust them to make sure package and distro updates go smoothly for the largest user-base, and I trust openSUSE TW more for rolling since they've been doing it longer. I also don't like the idea of running a fork of a distro that's a fork of another distro :p
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    Yeah, that sound right, I have just never personally used SUSE. Its high on my distro hopping list if Arch fails. And I too am skeptical of Mint. Again, immutable (and not so old) sounds better if you really dont want your system to break. Personally I am partial to CachyOS. Its Arch, but Clear Linux, with an auto installer and as many optimizations/patches ported over to the stock Arch packages as possible (but not to the point of incompatibility like Manjaro).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cryptonector 3y ago
I really liked the ZFS approach to rolling updates that we had in the Sun Storage Appliance: updates are `zfs send`s, and applying an update is `zfs recv`ing an update, then you reboot into the new snapshot. That requires: - making / read-only (so there's nothing to save from / on upgrade) - having all configuration state move out of / - having all upgrade actions relating to config files and so on be applied to a clone of the dataset that has that content This way backing out an upgrade is trivial, and you can be very confident in the ability to back out. This approach happens to be a very good idea for other things as well. Such as if you wanted to seal TPM keys to PCR values that bind all of /, well, you'd need a secure hash of all of / for that, and a Merkle hash tree filesystem (but not quite ZFS) can give you that.
fulafel 3y ago
Ubuntu is already a derivative distribution tracking Debian, and there seem to be obvious disadvantages to having the extra level of indirection, is there reasoning written up somewhere about why they don't base on Debian?
- calt 3y ago
  Especially since Debian has a testing release, which is a rolling release. Maybe this distro is based on Debian testing, but has some of the Ubuntu defaults?

73 points by sacrosanct 3y ago

Point releases for android and linux is really a pita. Even windows is a rolling release, win11 keeps getting updates without a reinstall.

Johnny555 3y ago
I've never done a reinstall to upgrade Ubuntu for point releases and even major releases, I just run do-release-upgrade when I want to upgrade.
- RussianCow 3y ago
  I haven't used Ubuntu in a few years now, but anecdotally, do-release-upgrade has failed on me more times than I can count (in both server and desktop environments).
  - creeble 3y ago
    Indeed, I no longer use do-release-upgrade and instead find it "easier" to install the new release from scratch and copy my ~user and other backups over. It's a PITA (have to install all the packages I had on old version), but I have scripts that mostly do it all for me now. If you've ever lived through a do-release-upgrade for mysql, you'll probably never do it again.
- cbsks 3y ago
  I did that only yesterday to upgrade from 22.04 LTS to 22.10, and now my laptop doesn’t boot. So it doesn’t always work. I am strongly considering trying Arch instead.
- oldandboring 3y ago
  Our experiences are different. Before I switched away to a rolling release distro (Manjaro) a couple years ago, I used Ubuntu and would perform the upgrades from one Ubuntu point release to the next. My success rate (something either moderately or critically not working after the upgrade) over those last couple years was probably about 25%. Always needed to wipe clean and reinstall, restore from backup. Tons of lost productivity. All that stopped when I went to the rolling release.
- Espionage724 3y ago
  I've heard too many horror-stories of major OS upgrades and even service packs back in XP and Vista days. New distro versions for me equals a clean state to make sure everything goes smoothly :p I have commands and notes that let me re-deploy within an hour on most distros, like these for Fedora: https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/distros:fedora_workstation_gnome https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/distros:fedora_workstation...

bravetraveler 3y ago

That's... interesting. I avoid Ubuntu largely due to the age of things -- I'm someone who prefers Fedora/Arch, closer to the 'edge'. Apt is another part of it, but honestly Debian seems to 'feel' better. Perhaps due to the packaging? Anyway, I'll probably try this out. Say I wanted to take Canonical out, does anyone here have anything to say for Debian Unstable?

xtracto 3y ago
I used to be a RPM based distro user back in the day before `yum` existed. The RPM dependency hell left me PTSD and using `apt` was a breath of fresh air. Nowadays I only use `yum` in Amazon based instances and for the normal day to day stuff I don't see any difference.
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  Totally understandable. I used up2date, too. It's pretty subtle. Ubuntu packages, maybe not all DEBs, like to prompt for input on how to proceed with new configs. For servers at scale with varying packages, levels, and requirements - this gets painful. Some config hackery can help, but creates a bit of a circular problem. RPM systems (by default) will trust the administrator. They don't prompt, and provide the new config file as a reference - without messing with what's already been deployed. Apt also likes to get hamstrung on previous transactions. If they broke for the reason I just mentioned [or any other], installing new/completely unrelated things is blocked. I can pretty much trust my RPM systems to do what they want/have been told... but not the DEB. Granted, my experience with DEB has mostly been limited to Ubuntu - so it could be that/Canonical.
  - ftaghn 3y ago
    > Granted, my experience with DEB has mostly been limited to Ubuntu - so it could be that/Canonical. It is not a Canonical specificity, but it is overridable behavior. For the dpkg prompting on configuration file changes: https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/ https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-config... > You can also make those options permanent by creating /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/local: > Dpkg::Options { > "--force-confdef"; > "--force-confold"; > } Along with invoking apt with -y (assume yes) will get you close to the behavior you seek. Or as a permanent setting: APT::Get::Assume-Yes "true";

suslik 3y ago

I wonder - why isn't Arch the one distro to rule them all - especially if we talk about rolling release? I was distro hoping since 2008 - Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Centos, Fedora, Mint, Slack - you name it. When I found Arch, after a couple of months I knew it was over. It really "just works" in the best sence.

hexfish 3y ago
Because in most enterprise environments it's a welcome property to keep security updates separate from feature updates, which is not something rolling distro's provide, as they just follow upstream as fast as possible. Say my enterprise application is built upon the API (in an abstract sense, if you will) of package xyz, version 1.0. And then xyz, version 2.0 comes out. I would have to rebuild my enterprise application to be compatible with API 2 and I don't have the resources nor the incentive for that because I don't need API 2. Then a vulnerability gets reported in both xyz version 1.0 and 2.0 but xyz's maintainers only patch 2.0 (as 2.0.1). In that case I am very happy that non-rolling (enterprisey) distro's like Ubuntu, CentOS, Redhat etc backport that security patch so I can keep running xyz version 1 (or rather 1.0.0-1 or something like that). Where most rolling distro's would just 'force' you to upgrade to 2.0.1. Hope my explanation makes sense.
- antioedipus 3y ago
  First of all, many rolling release distros don’t follow upstream as fast as possible—there’s often some testing window. People go on and on about backported security patches and stability, but I’ve had to handle so many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported fix that I now think this is basically a fantasy. The distro maintainers just don’t have the time (or experience with all the software they ship!) to backport patches for every single issue. I’d really rather get a fix by the actual software maintainer than a year-old mystery meat version that still has a bunch of known non security bugs fixed in upstream that the distro maintainers don’t care about. Even worse, being able to stay on essentially outdated software puts a lot of organizations into a tough spot when their LTS version finally becomes unsupported. Practice makes perfect, and I think lots of small, regular updates result in a lot less pain than a mega-update every few years (really: I’ve had to manage one of these more than once, and it’s a total nightmare figuring out which of 1000 changes in the new LTS version caused a performance regression or something).

umvi 3y ago

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is also a great rolling release distro. For anyone that's never tried rolling release, the main benefit is that it keeps your tools/libs/kernel updated with the latest upstream. If you use Ubuntu (for example) it ships with some python version (say 3.8), and then it will almost never update again unless you manually install a newer python version or update Ubuntu itself to the next release (which might not exist). With something like Tumbleweed (or Rhino in this case), updates come out every few days, and every time you do an update you'll find python is now on 3.10, then 3.11, etc. It's really nice when every compiler/language is on the latest version by default.

ripley12 3y ago
> the main benefit is that it keeps your tools/libs updated with the latest. For tools you want to be on the latest version of, why not use a package manager like homebrew that isn't tied to your distro? I've never understood the Linux culture of tightly coupling OS and package management (and so I use brew even on Linux), but I seem to be in the minority.
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  A distribution is a collection of software - if reduced to a certain point, the identity is lost! It makes sense to me for a distribution to find commonly wanted software, package it up, and make it available. There's tailoring to consider! Some go further and introduce patches. Not every distribution is as good at both contributing and being accepted upstream. Now, if you want something newer, then you're obviously welcome to acquire that as you see fit. The distribution will help with that, too -- providing build utils, headers, etc. Enabling third party repositories, ie: PPA/COPR There are also runtimes to avoid building; Flatpak/Snap, Docker/Podman, etc. Though, these also lose some of the 'distribution spirit'
  - ripley12 3y ago
    This is a really good answer, thank you.
- 3y ago

bee_rider 3y ago

How does one make a point-release distro into a rolling one? A distro is a repo and configuration (and, of course, the community that grows around it, but that’s sort of ephemeral). So, if they are doing rolling release, they must not be using Ubuntu’s repos… what do they use? Anyway, this is not to poo-poo a new rolling release distro; the more the merrier. I think people are waking up to the fact that rolling, with fewer moving parts per update, is the best way to get stability. Debugging effort grows like O(2^n) where n is the number of packages updated.

gravitate 3y ago
Vanilla OS is great too: https://vanillaos.org/ https://vanillaos.org/ The unique selling point is its immutability as described here: https://documentation.vanillaos.org/docs/almost/ https://documentation.vanillaos.org/docs/almost/ > Immutability is meant to be used as a safety measure to prevent accidental changes to the system, so it should be kept enabled most of the time.
- Espionage724 3y ago
  It seems easier to just fix my system instead of trying to prevent breaking it :p I don't know what an accidental change is, but if I want to change something I'm going to change it and likely tear through immutability anyway. I can go back to Windows if I want to be limited in what I can change :p
beanjuiceII 3y ago
just go with it, this is what we do in linux distro land, it doesn't have to make sense. It just has to sound cool when i tell someone what distro i've moved to for the 3rd time this week
tamimio 3y ago
All linux users go through distro-hopping phase at some point after passing the first intro phase, I did back in 2007 too, but then you realize that whatever get the job done it will be your daily driver. In the past 6 years my main one is Mint, and it’s stable and overall good and let me focus on the stuff I do on the OS not the OS itself, so I’m sticking with that.

award_ 3y ago

Seems like a good project, but I'm not sure why I would choose this over something like Debian Sid though?

vesinisa 3y ago
How does the stability of Sid compare to an actual rolling release type distro like Arch?
- dima55 3y ago
  I've used sid on my machines for decades, as have many other people. Works great. It's not an official "release" in that it's not all tested together, but neither is Arch, really.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    i'd imagine sid is far more stable than arch, but that is just my anecdotal experience. plus ... ubuntu is debian. can't rly imagine why you'd want to base a new distro that is debian-based on something other than debian. arch is a cool distro that I definitely respect, but I don't think it is appropriate to use for a workstation that you need unless you are on a filesystem that will do snapshots before package updates such that you can easily rollback. ie btrfs/zypper.
- Daegalus 3y ago
  From my experience, its much more stable. Sid is "unstable" by Debian's definition, but Debian's definition of Stable is a lot more intense than most other distros. If you want a little more stability but still rolling release, do Debian Testing. Packages are only really delayed by 2-10 days (except during release windows where they do branching). The only criteria for something getting into Testing is that it passes all tests while in Sid for multiple or all supported platforms. But overall, Sid is fairly rock solid. If anything I think Rhino Linux should have taken Debian Sid or Testing as a source, adding all the niceties/desktop/sane defaults of Ubuntu that they like. and released that.

elromulous 3y ago

This! I've needed a rolling Ubuntu for so many things. Ubuntu is basically the "default" distro in many places, and pushing out upgrades via a new image or some big bang upgrade was a lot more painful than having a rolling updates.

ramesh31 3y ago

I'm so happy that XFCE is still a thing. I remember using Xubuntu as my daily driver through the nightmare years of Windows 8 Metro and it was a dream come true.

creeble 3y ago

I don't get what's "Ubuntu-based" about Rhino? It uses XFCE, and Pacstall for package management, which to me makes it utterly unlike Ubuntu.

yoyohello13 3y ago
It uses the Ubuntu package Repos. That’s generally what <distro>-based means in the Linux world.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  Hard disagree. Distro based is normally based on foo being a fork of bar either once or periodically rebasing on parent. Merely consuming the same packages is insufficient.

djha-skin 3y ago

I'm very excited for this, but I find it odd that an OS that focuses on the bleeding edge uses a non-wayland desktop framework as its default. The most anticipated software I'm waiting to have drop in 24.04 is kde+wayland.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

Every linux distribution, IMO, has a sweet spot niche. You run Arch if you want that critical mass of bleeding edge community support/maintenance. Fedora for a pre release RHEL. Clear Linux for absolute x86 performance. Immutable distros like Kionite or SteamOS for focused tasks and stability. Gentoo for embedded stuff or weird patches. Mint for an old (but stable) base. And you run Ubuntu because it is default linux. Its what you have to deal with on your cloud instance or work server or whatever. It is possibly the only thing some specific software you want is packaged/tested on. So Rhino linux is... Ubuntu, but rolling? If it actually works with Ubuntu targeted packages, thats pretty cool, as it would take tons pain out of Ubuntu.

Espionage724 3y ago
openSUSE Tumbleweed makes more sense for rolling imo and was even more up-to-date than Arch at times with major DE versions and kernels. And openSUSE like most other mainstream distros doesn't require an encyclopedia to install :p Fedora is probably the most secure server OS you can get; can't beat SELinux, and nobody else implements it besides Fedora and RHEL. I personally see no point to Mint since Ubuntu exists, and Mint has had their own share of specific issues one being that Wine didn't work for some months. The rep I got from them in the past was that they mixed their own, Debian, and Ubuntu packages in their default repos that occasionally caused dependency issues. Maybe it's not that bad, but Ubuntu is still around and a lot more supported. Ubuntu is the distro. It's popular, it looks good (not the boring grey/white Adwaita theme), and can handle multimedia without having to involve any 3rd-party repos. I'd recommend it to beginners today, and I'd probably be using it as a desktop OS still but I like consistency and my home lab is Fedora :p I have zero interest in Rhino Linux. I don't have issue with Ubuntu's update procedures and trust them to make sure package and distro updates go smoothly for the largest user-base, and I trust openSUSE TW more for rolling since they've been doing it longer. I also don't like the idea of running a fork of a distro that's a fork of another distro :p
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Yeah, that sound right, I have just never personally used SUSE. Its high on my distro hopping list if Arch fails. And I too am skeptical of Mint. Again, immutable (and not so old) sounds better if you really dont want your system to break. Personally I am partial to CachyOS. Its Arch, but Clear Linux, with an auto installer and as many optimizations/patches ported over to the stock Arch packages as possible (but not to the point of incompatibility like Manjaro).

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cryptonector 3y ago

I really liked the ZFS approach to rolling updates that we had in the Sun Storage Appliance: updates are `zfs send`s, and applying an update is `zfs recv`ing an update, then you reboot into the new snapshot. That requires: - making / read-only (so there's nothing to save from / on upgrade) - having all configuration state move out of / - having all upgrade actions relating to config files and so on be applied to a clone of the dataset that has that content This way backing out an upgrade is trivial, and you can be very confident in the ability to back out. This approach happens to be a very good idea for other things as well. Such as if you wanted to seal TPM keys to PCR values that bind all of /, well, you'd need a secure hash of all of / for that, and a Merkle hash tree filesystem (but not quite ZFS) can give you that.

fulafel 3y ago

Ubuntu is already a derivative distribution tracking Debian, and there seem to be obvious disadvantages to having the extra level of indirection, is there reasoning written up somewhere about why they don't base on Debian?

calt 3y ago
Especially since Debian has a testing release, which is a rolling release. Maybe this distro is based on Debian testing, but has some of the Ubuntu defaults?