Rhino [a rolling release Ubuntu-based distribution with Pacstall & XFCE at its core] has now officially moved out of Beta! We have released Rhino Linux 2023.1 on x86_64, ARM, Pine64 and Raspberry Pi devices.
Quite a lot has changed since our first beta release back in April 2023, and so instead of a generic changelog, I want to do something a little different and discuss what actually went into the making of the operating system.
More interested in the why?
Copied from their front page:
Why Rhino Linux?
Rhino Linux re-invents the Ubuntu experience as a rolling release distribution atop a stable Desktop Environment. Pacstall is at the very heart of the distribution, providing essential packages such as the Linux kernel, Firefox, Rhino Linux specific applications and theming.
We use sane defaults. The XFCE Desktop environment is used for its stable and rock-solid base. Pacstall, our package manager of choice will always provide the latest software, even software that is not available in the Ubuntu repositories, and our custom XFCE configuration provides a traditional desktop that just works, so you can instantly begin using your computer.
Seems like a nice distro! Iwouldn’t use it because I don’t want to go back to a “regular” distro after using NixOS, but I’ll definitely recommend it to friends. Too bad it doesn’t have an RSS feed for the news…
So… is it Snap
infectederr… Snap based, like Ubuntu? Because otherwise it looks kinda neat.It does not use snaps, according to First Look at Rhino Linux, a Rolling-Release Distro Based on Ubuntu and Xfce:
Ubuntu fans who don’t like Snaps would also love to hear that Rhino Linux doesn’t include Snap apps, nor Flatpak apps.
You can make Ubuntu based distros without including snaps. E.g. Linux Mint removes them as well as Rhino Linux. Canonical has made some questionable decisions but one thing Ubuntu does well is drivers and hardware support.
