LaoBlog

From Pinephone's Wiki :

Rhino Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution that uses the rolling-release model by tracking the devel branch of repositories. The target are developers and advanced users. Download it from Rhino Linux Downloads (select Pine64 on the dropdown.

As an advanced user (), I downloaded the image and installed it on a microSD card. The boot isn't the fastest at all, at a certain point I also doubted it was working, the screen was completely dark, but after a minute, the pointer of the cursor appeared. The pointer? Yes, exactly. Because Rhino Linux is primary a desktop distro, which has been adapted for Pine's devices too.

The bad news is, there isn't a phone module. Therefore, no calls, no sms. Lol... I can speculate they didn't had time yet, or some problem to adapt the phone part to the customized DE. No KDE nor Phosh here. The DE is Unicorn, a customized version of XFCE. Btw, if I remember well there are already other distros with working phone, using XFCE as DE (PostmarketOS, I think). I've been asked why XFCE and not Phosh or others on Rhino Linux. The answer of the developer is:

"...when investigating we quickly found that the Ubuntu repositories utilised to create Rhino Linux currently ship a broken Phosh package, so we came up with an alternative. Turns out, almost all of the mobile environments aren’t working on Ubuntu right now, so we fell back to what we knew worked soundly: XFCE. To do this, the environment utilizes onboard as the system keyboard, a slightly modified version of the Rhino Linux XFCE dotfiles, and a special patch for XFCE to allow for auto-rotation. It currently uses X11, but we are looking into moving to Wayland when XFCE 4.20 comes around."

The GUI is beautiful, but not finger friendly: difficult to type on the keyboard, buttons on the screen are too small, even closing a window can be difficult. Using a pen for touchscreens won't solve the problem, the cllickable area is too small. It is a bit questionable that the default XFCE Plank dock provides a button for an editor among the few available buttons (editing on a phone isn't for sure the main task) but hey, it's a desktop distro... I also would improve the look of the buttons, Imho they arent clear; I mean, you don't know what it is for until you click on it and the window appears on the screen. The dock also provides uLauncher, to start applications and search in the folders. The grid of applications is provided by Lightpad; here too, some problem: you have to slide the grid to see all the available applications, and to do that, there are 3 (it depends on the number of apps) microscopic white buttons at the button, and clicking on them is very problamatic. To switch form one virtual desktop to another, there's xfdashboard Again, you can see that the main target is the desktop pc, those are problems you won't experiment there. A gesture to close the windows would be very nice, in my humble opinion... Also setting up different session/ desktop profiles would help to improve the experience on small screens.

All those considerations, as you have red, are about the GUI / DE. Since the phone doesn't work at the moment, I only could focus on other aspect of this disto. I quickly explained some of its problems on the PInephone. Said this, I believe it has a some potential. If you can contribute, I think devs would be happy for your help. 

The distro is a bit heavy for the Pinephone, but it seems to be quite stable, although still in beta. I didn't experiment crashes or freezes during the half day of test.

The language support isn't complete. You can find common European languages, but for ex, no Japanese, Chinese, Thai, etc...

Wifi and bluetooth work. The camera works too, but there is no button to close the preview window! Updating the distro works too.

Battery consumption, as usual, is one of the week points of the Pinephone. Don't expect to play with it for a long time.

At the end, considering that it is still in the beta stage, Rhino Linux looks promising. Like many others. Let's see if the developers will have enough time (and money) to go on on the Pinephone too   A plus for the logo of Rhino Linux Free the Rhino! Have fun!