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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I was confused.
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I had to scroll to here in the comments to realize that it was something separate
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 ;)
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.
Alpine is still GCC based in the very least.
Indeed it seems so.
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.
They are saying these are the difference Chimera has
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 ?
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.
Sure, go ahead, use licenses that let Apple steal everything later.
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 🫡
I could waste a lot of time on this :)
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.
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.
Sounds like an interesting systemd free Linux distro and what’s not to like about the BSD userland. Thanks for sharing.
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).
