After a much-anticipated wait, more than five months after the latest 2023.4 release, the Rhino team has just announced the new Rhino Linux 2024.1. But before moving on, let’s briefly explain what this distribution is for those who might not be familiar with it.
Rhino is a rolling-release Ubuntu-based distro providing an in-house modified Xfce desktop environment called Unicorn Desktop. Have you encountered the terms “rolling release” and “Ubuntu” used together? It’s a pairing you might not often see, even with the wide variety of options in the Linux ecosystem.
The other striking feature of the distro is the in-house developed rhino-pkg tool. It allows you to search, install, remove, and update packages from multiple sources, such as native DEB repos, Pacstall (the AUR for Ubuntu), Flathub, and Snap Store. Now, back to the topic.
The development of the new Rhino Linux 2024.1 was not without its hurdles. The team faced a period of stagnation due to developer burnout, prompting a reevaluation of the organizational structure. This resulted in the drafting of a new “Rhino Linux constitution,” emphasizing community involvement and sustainable development practices.
The new release was also slowed down by extensive updates to the Ubuntu codebase, including mandatory snap-related patches, a 64-bit time shift, and the epic security vulnerability found in the XZ utils.
Despite these challenges, however, the team managed to address critical issues promptly using Pacstall, ensuring that the release, though delayed, met the high standards expected by its users.
Rhino Linux 2024.1 introduces several key enhancements, notably the latest releases of Pacstall, which now stand at version 5.0. It has seen massive improvements, including updates to the pacscript format for better security and testing capabilities and enhancements that allow for a more user-friendly experience for scripting and package management.
Unfortunately, the release is not without its minor glitches. Users may find desktop icons not appearing on live boot ISOs, though this issue resolves post-installation. For those encountering display issues with the global menu plugin in Unicorn, a temporary fix involves adjusting the CSS settings in the system’s configuration files.
The release announcement provides detailed information about all changes. Installation ISO images for the x86_64 and ARM64 architectures are available from the project website’s downloads section.
Lastly, current Rhino users can upgrade to the latest version by running rpk update -y in their terminal.
