Rolling Rhino Remix | Hacker News Reader

Rolling Rhino Remix

rollingrhinoremix.github.io

26 pointszdw10 comments

I wasn't aware there were Ubuntu users who wanted this. I assumed most people thought of the release cycle/stability as a "feature", particularly if their desktop is running some mission-critical service and can't risk it breaking with a random update. If they wanted rolling release or bleeding-edge kernel, I'd assume they'd go to something like Arch, or perhaps to a lesser degree, Fedora.

People are starting to realize the instability of rolling release is a myth. Small incremental changes are easier to deal with, just like they are anywhere else in software.

I think with the Steam Deck being based on Arch, Valve recommending Manjaro as a Desktop Distro, and Microsoft having more frequent updates to Windows, Canonical has probably seen the shift in popularity towards more rolling release style distros/frequent updates and wants a piece of the pie.

This isn't an official Canonical project

I have been using Debian "unstable" for the last 15 years, which basically is just this: instead of releases all updates come incrementally, so the size of an update is typically only depending on how often I do my `apt-upgrade`.

Is Rolling Rhino Remix anything different from this?

No. It's using devel, plus a script that turns off the warnings apt produces because of the symlink devel in reality is on the mirrors.

Sounds neat and I might try for the novelty. I am only skeptical of the regular user's need for and usability of rolling release OSs: This is not a volunteer project and not officially supported by Canonical, which means something is more likely to break (e.g., when Canonical changes their devel setup).

A rolling release system has to be really robust, and I get that that is the main difficulty faced by any continuous release system. But especially OSs should take great care in validating for breaking changes. No-one wants half their workday gone because their OS broke on a daily upgrade.

I bet Canonical is keeping a close eye on this project because rolling releases are probably on Ubuntu's product feature wishlist somewhere!

It would be amazing if there were instructions to convert an existing ubuntu installation to use this.

Wouldn’t it be more amazing if there was a script you could run on your existing Ubuntu installation to convert it to rolling?

There is!

See at the bottom of the page/article a link to the Rolling Rhino script by Martin, should do exactly what you want.

The Rolling Rhino Remix is just an Ubuntu install image with the necessary config changes already applied, so it’s easier for newcomers because you don’t need to first install an official Ubuntu version.

I've been running Ubuntu devel for 2 years. This is no different. Please stop reposting trivial non-news.

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