Ubuntu has been released twice a year since it was first released in 2004, and while there are only two years left until Ubuntu celebrates its 20th anniversary, the release cycle hasn’t changed. More than Ubuntu, Fedora has been doing this for a long time, albeit not on such a strict schedule. With one exception, this distro is Arch Linux, carving out its own niche from an already small Gentoo user base.
While there are many positive reasons to draw users into Arch’s world, its main feature that still makes the most sense in today’s world of continuous integration and delivery is its rolling release strategy. While I don’t think this strategy will bring about a massive shift in the industry like DevOps adoption or the shift to cloud computing, it’s not hard to see the entire industry following Arch’s strategy in a variety of different places. One could even say that Microsoft’s Windows has become a rolling release.
While many of Arch’s peers have jumped on the bandwagon, well-known open-source giant Ubuntu has yet to make that leap. The Rolling Rhino project hopes to change that by transitioning Ubuntu to a rolling release.
How to achieve it? According to the documentation, this is mostly achieved by tracking “development” libraries, which are present in every release but are not used very often in production. It all had to start with a modified Ubuntu image, which can be found here.
The distribution must then be “initialized” following the steps in the documentation. Finally, you’ll need to use the custom tool “rhino-update”, which extends the capabilities of apt to allow the distribution to update itself outside the normal confines of a traditional Ubuntu distribution.
While Ubuntu’s server offerings are more successful in the cloud, the desktop version seems a bit underwhelming compared to other distros such as Fedora and Manjaro (Arch’s friendly install). Ubuntu was once praised for its ease of use and installation, and now rivals have to Catch up in stride. Will Rolling Rhino make Ubuntu gain more traction in the consumer/hobbyist space, or will it increase Ubuntu’s relevance in the container space? Only time will tell.