Rhino Linux - An intriguing distro

I ran across an old Reddit post about Rhino Linux. So I figured I’d investigate. I though it may end up being “just another Ubuntu variant.” It sure doesn’t seem to be the case.

From their website’s description:

Rhino Linux re-invents the Ubuntu experience as a rolling-release distribution built on a stable desktop environment. Diverging from Ubuntu-based tradition, Rhino Linux is not derived from any LTS or interim releases, but instead uses Ubuntu’s devel branch to provide a rolling experience.

Pacstall is the AUR for Ubuntu, and assists in providing the most up-to-date software, even those unavailable in the standard repositories. It is at the very heart of the distribution, providing essential packages such as the Linux kernel, web browsers, our customized Unicorn Desktop, and other Rhino Linux utilities.

I’ve been using it the past week or so on a Gnome Boxes VM. I’m really liking it. I think I’m going to install on bare metal. So my laptop will again be getting another distro to test and use.

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Its setup is unique; never seen one that offered to setup so many different package managers (along with pacstall, of course). From my limited testing, it does seem to be a true “rolling” release as advertised. For example, all of my Ubuntu-based devel VMs (from the latest 25.04 alpha release) are still on the 6.11 kernel branch, while Rhino has been upgraded to 6.12.

My only gripe is that rpk (rhino-pkg) does not support installing multiple packages at once (from my bug report here: https://github.com/rhino-linux/rhino-pkg/issues/50), even if all are being managed by apt (nala, in this case). I’m not sure if this is a limitation of pacstall or rpk.

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Well, I’ve moved on from Rhino for the time being. As much as I really like the idea of a rolling release Ubuntu variant, I just cannot deal with XFCE. Even one as customized as Rhino’s. It still feels VERY dated, and rather claustrophobic.

Since I want a non-Arch distro for my laptop, I’ve opted for Debian. I started my Linux journey 20+ years ago with Debian, so it seems like a good idea. I have the sources list set to Debian testing.

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Have you thought about using Void Linux? Not only is it a rolling stable distro, but XBPS, its package manager, works very similarly to Pacman. The main difference is that the commands are long, like Apt/Dpkg.


I am also interested in Rhino, but news about the distro makes me feel like it won’t be around for long if they don’t get funding, despite all the work they’ve put into it.

I’m all for funding projects, but if money is the reason for the existence of the distro, and 98% of people who use FOSS/FLOSS never fund the projects they use every day, then I doubt Rhino Linux will stand the test of time.

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I’m sticking with my Endeavour! :rofl:

Edit: There’s no place to go except “To Infinity & Beyond”

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I don’t think I’d recommend it for desktop use (though who knows), but I decided I was semi-unhappy with my server (again) and in the wee hours under cover of darkness, I reformatted it’s SSD and it’s now running Alpine Linux. I was surprisingly pleased with how fast I got it setup having never ever seen the distro before. No show stoppers, but then it just does media-server, dns, and ntp for the home network.
Since I don’t need any third party software, MUSL and non-systemd, shouldn’t cause me any grief. I’ll see how I feel about updating as I get some updates. They seem to be pretty current on versions.

Same… on my primary desktop PC. EndeavourOS will always be my primary, daily driver! :enos: :enos_flag:

But I’ve always liked to have something different on my laptop. And I do really like Debian a lot. Particularly the “testing” branch. A soft spot for me since I began my Linux journey with Debian.

I’ve tried just about every linux distro on the top 100 distro watch list. There is always another one that comes along. The only ones I’m really interested in are Arch based and I don’t even like all of them. CachyOS is about the best I’ve seen next to EndeavourOS. I don’t even like Arch as much. :laughing:

But i hear you. Debian will always be there for me also.

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I’m not sure if I tried Rhino Linux, but having a lot of fun with Alpine Linux.

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