Chimera Linux

z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org to Linux@lemmy.ml – 124 points – Chimera Linux
chimera-linux.org

I just found about this distro, which is relatively new (2021). Its specificity is that it doesn't features any GNU software by default, which I find interesting.

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Oof, the most recent news posting is "entering alpha phase" which is a big no thanks for me. In addition, the main descriptive sentence says "It aims to be clean and usable while addressing the various shortcomings of an average Linux distribution." But then doesn't explain that. What does it consider to be shortcomings of an average distro?

Yeah it's definitely young and not for everyone. But you gotta start somewhere ! I do agree that the "shortcomings" are not explicitly defined, but rather implied in the FAQ.

Alpine is also GNU-free afaik.

EDIT: Except for the GCC toolchain.

It's a lot of things-free, to be fair

That's kind of the point though, as it's now used as a base for many containers ;)

Its still amazing how easy it is to use, you can get a desktop environment running in a couple of minutes and apk is insanely fast and easy

Would have probably tried as my main PC distro if NVIDIA drivers would work on it :(

Chimera Linux actually uses apk or Alpine Package Keeper as its package manager, they acknowledge this but despite that market themselves as if they did something revolutionary that has never been done before

had the same thought, not sure if Alpine is built with LLVM though.

Yup. It uses GCC toolchain afaik.

That's right ! It uses BusyBox as its userland which was my main problem with it (though you can easily install GNU coreutils).

Just use Alpine. Chimera uses Alpine's package manager anyway. The only reason you havent heard about Alpine in this context is because they do not claim they are doing anything revolutionary, they just strive to make a great distro.

Alpine is nice, but this one has some differences:

  • LLVM instead of GCC toolchain
  • not so barebones, gives you more ready-to-go installation
  • obviously not so lightweight

I thought the whole point of alpine is it's lightweight, given its use in so many docker containers

I was stating that this Chimera isn't that lightweight.

I already used alpine for a few years, before containers were a thing. I heard about it exactly because it was advertised as a distro without GNU components, which was revolutionary at the time.

You sound weary with that kind of comment, I wonder what bother you so much about seeing a new distro pop up ?

This is kind of intriguing. I like FreeBSD's userland tools a lot better. Have you tried running it? If not, I might see what it's all about. The GNU toolchain is a mixed bag. Some of it is really well documented, some stuff average, and others is just a dog's breakfast.

I only learnt about it today, so I couldn't check it. I have this project of building my own distro using musl and a non GNU userland, and it is a very annoying process, so I felt like I should share this one.

I have been running it for a while. It is mostly awesome.

A non-trivial amount of software assumes Glibc though and so you will have the odd hiccup because of MUSL. I think one of the goals of Chimera is to improve that situation.

I have one old laptop where I installed Gentoo with musl+llvm profile. It's fun to tinker with. If I need to run any game binaries, I guess I'd need to run some containers...

Sure, go ahead, use licenses that let Apple steal everything later.

Not using GNU software doesn't mean you don't use any copyleft licenses or GPL.

It is good to have a diversity of software. That doesn't make it stupid. Most of the alternatives to GNU programs are GPL licensed anyway.

This is patently false. Most alternatives to GNU software are permissively licensed (MIT, BSD, Apache, etc.). Just look at musl, clang, bzip2, and the various “new” userland replacements like ripgrep, neovim, bat, exa, dust, etc. The one notable exception is busybox which is GPL 2.

I don’t know why this trend exists, but I am constantly disappointed that talented young open source devs choose to sacrifice software freedom just because it will make their software easier to integrate in proprietary contexts. This strikes me as pure vanity or greed on the devs part so that their software is more popular and maybe even monetizable.

I hope that trend halts, but time will tell.

Arguing over licences to judge how much a piece of software is worth is sterile IMO.

If you personally cannot use software that's not GPL'd, then it's fine. But there's no need to sound condescending like this, it brings absolutely nothing to the table. This could only result in a flame war (and it already is unfortunately, seeing the comments below), which is kind of sad.

So yeah, no prob mate, this is not for you, we get it. See you on the next thread 🫡

People are going to focus on the GNU free aspect, and I like that about Chimera. That is not the right way to understand the project though.

The creator of Chimera Linux was one of the core contributors to Void Linux. Chimera is an attempt to create a distro with a similar technical philosophy from somebody that thinks they can do better with slightly different choices.

Sounds like an interesting systemd free Linux distro and what's not to like about the BSD userland. Thanks for sharing.

This means Chimera is not a GNU/Linux system, as it utilizes neither GNU utilities, nor GNU libc, nor GNU toolchain. The system is bootstrappable almost entirely without any GNU components (other than make) and is capable of booting without them (however, most people will have some).

I'd guess they'll move to some bsd make at some point.

Good luck with that, with the amount of Programmers that use the Gnuism for make, I would say that no developer can patch that amount of software

Uh. That would be huge undertaking indeed.

Let me guess all these makefile generators create gnu-style makefiles too?

Didn't know that those projects existed, I have always written makefiles from begining based myself on the dwm makefiles :)

But a quick Google search and the first project that appears say that:

A simple makefile generator that can generate makefiles for: GNU-make targeting MinGW, clang-cl or MSVC.

This is nice. Shame it won't support systemd.

Turning this a little around by saying: systemd doesn't support musl.

I remember reading somewhere that systemd specifically uses some gnu extensions of glibc, and thus cannot be built against any other libc implementation (at the moment).