rolling-rhino VS toolbox

Well there is a community project called Rolling Rhino that converts Ubuntu to a rolling release by activating the devel repos and a bit shenanigans. Look here I haven't tested it but maybe this a nice alternative

Where you are right is that, its not an official ubuntu project as far as I know (I believe it was a side project by Ubuntu Desktop's lead developer), but it was a thing before these guys, installable in a simila way as Debian Unstable is (install the nightly image and manually edit the sources.list or use the 'rolling rhino' script).

But then, since before the 20.04 release, I just YOLO it and always update to the latest dev branch on my daily driver, a la Rolling Rhino.

Personally I think of Fedora & Ubuntu (non-LTS cycle) as pretty equal; though Fedora gives you maybe 6-13 months before you need to release-upgrade which is longer than the 6-9 months of Ubuntu (that's the benefit of Fedora to me; though I prefer Debian/Ubuntu still myself). No one distribution is always ahead of the others, but it's rarely Fedora in my view, though I'm not including Fedora rawhide though as my Fedora install is rarely on that; my OpenSuSE tumbleweed box is usually used if I need a system that is equal or further ahead of my Ubuntu/Debian system... I'm involved with a flavor so if I've found a bug, I use the other systems to confirm the bug before filing upstream.. Other systems I use are Fedora (version varies), OpenSuSE tumbleweed & Debian testing. Debian testing is actually behind my current Ubuntu flavor & has been awhile.. but that'll change as I watch new packages enter Sid... My Ubuntu system sits on the development cycle.. so if you want the most up-to-date Ubuntu system, don't forget you can use development (currently jammy), or use rolling rhino. Yes of course they're not stable so problems may occur (and I'd always ensure you have a replacement system ready to use... hey I've got my Debian testing, my opensuse, my fedora, etc ; and this system is dual boot anyway; my other install being a rarely used Ubuntu focal/20.04).

Ubuntu does have rolling rhino if sitting on the development cycle (currently jammy) isn't enough for you.

I was giving this some thought the other day. I think the LTS release cycle is perfect for the average user. I wonder if the development releases could be replaced with a rolling release? I don't use the development releases, but I'd imagine it's tedious to perform an upgrade every six months. I'd imagine it would be easier for those users if Canonical released a mature implementation of something like Rolling Rhino.

Martin Wimpress’ Rolling Rhino project has a bit more info.

The team has both made a ton of effort switching off their proprietary Skia based rendering tech and adopting standard Wayland, and has put forward huge effort to making running incredibly well integrated real Linux containers just work.

The headline is true. ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment. But it obfuscates the details. It's a damned by omission statement. It has some really good sauce to help you not notice often, but it's not at all a Linux desktop environment one can regularly use. You can do a lot of Linux desktop-y things but only through well crafted special unique wrapped processes that mostly but not fully help mock & emulate a regular Linux desktop. Even though it now runs Wayland, the apps you want to run will have atypical intermediates up the wazoo.

And no one else uses any of this tech. ChromiumOs has so much interesting container tech, does such an interesting job making containers think they have a regular Linux / FreeDesktop environment. It's far far far far deeper virtualization than for example https://github.com/containers/toolbox . But you know what? Google has made zero effort to get these pieces adopted elsewhere. It's open source but not intended for use outside Chromium/ChromeOS. I respect & think ChromeOS is a quite viable Linux, and it's so much closer to the metal & more interesting, amazing tech, but my gods Microsoft has gone 300x further to establish wsl2 as a sustainable community effort folks could use & target, in a way that ChromiumOS has done nothing about.

It's sad how Google has transformed from a company that appreciated & worked with ecosystems, that drove things collectively forward, into an individual player that does their own things & delivers from on high. ChromiumOS is such an incredible effort, but it's so internernally drive & focused, and it's hard to believe in such a wildcat effort, even though it's so so good. It keeps coming into better alignment with Linux Desktop actual, but via shims and emulations that no one else cares about or which seems marketed elsewhere. And that inward focus makes the whole effort both so exceptional & promising, but suspect. Such a different nearby but alternative & separately governed universe. ChromiumOS/ChromeOS do excellent at faking being a Linux desktop, and wonderfully have increasingly drawn more strength from that universe, but are still wholly their own very distinct very separate very controller other space. In many ways that's great, secure, good, and miraculously transparently done. But it's still hard to really trust, being such a weird alien impostor, faking so much for end user apps, and there's tension in believing ChromeOS will keep straddling the rift in pro-user manifestations forever.

I'm really, really happy with my current setup of Fedora immutable + toolbox [0]. This tool lets you create containers that are fully integrated with the system, so you have acces to the entire Fedora repos, can run graphical apps, etc. while still having everything inside a container in your home directory. That means no Flatpak required. Highly recommended.

[0] https://containertoolbx.org

Seems like toolbox is also in this space; https://github.com/containers/toolbox

With Silverblue the core repos are very similar to what you'd have on regular Fedora. With more of a philosophical shift about where you're supposed to install things from. The idea being that the base OS is immutable and you keep it fairly minimal - even though you are technically free to install any of Fedora packages to it. And then you install user applications through Flatpak and toolbx. Where these more user space focussed applications are installed to your home directory and are sandboxed away from actual access to your OS. With iOS/Android style application permissions like "Give app permission to access camera" and "Give app permission to modify files in home directory". Allowing you even further customise the sandboxing of applications. Do you really want that app to have access to your microphone?

I'd probably try running it on the host system first. If you want to use your nvidia gpu inside toolbox, you would indeed need to install the drivers in the container: https://github.com/containers/toolbox/issues/116

Use toolbox on CentOS or Ubuntu if you want a Fedora environment with more up to date tools: https://containertoolbx.org/