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.

6 points

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.

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2 points

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.

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2 points

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

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2 points

Uh. That would be huge undertaking indeed.

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

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2 points

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.

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0 points

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

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3 points

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).

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2 points

I heard about this a little while back. I think it’s interesting, and it’s nice to see someone try something slightly different. The creator is obviously opinionated about how their distro should work. At least it’s not just another debian/ubuntu based distro.

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14 points

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.

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5 points

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
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4 points

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

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2 points

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

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1 point

They are saying these are the difference Chimera has

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1 point

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 ?

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