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> Chimera is a general-purpose OS born from unhappiness with the state of Linux distributions. It's built around the core idea that a simple system does not hav

> Chimera is a general-purpose OS born from unhappiness with the state of Linux distributions. It's built around the core idea that a simple system does not have to require endless setup and customization to be practical. This seems disingenuous at best. Many distros already supply this feature. Debian is the most notable but there are many others. Install it, make any tweaks you want from the base install, sit on it for many years unchanged. Considering the next paragraph goes on to describe OpenBSD userland, LLVM compiler, and musl libc, it appears the aim is actually to build a Linux distribution without GNU. I usually steer away from projects which are defined by what they are not. It seems to build a community whose roots are based in hostility.

mig39 3y ago
> If that's the aim then just state that. At the top of the first page, under the Chimera Linux logo: "A modern, general-purpose non-GNU Linux distribution"
darkwater 3y ago
Came here to paste the same quote, just to highlight how disconnected from reality can be advertising "does not have to require endless setup" and then describe a rolling update distro, focused on power users and based on FreeBSD userland with a Linux kernel.
fmoralesc 3y ago
Not just not GNU: they also ditch systemd for dinit, syslog-ng and a bunch of homegrown plumbing: > We are also putting a lot of effort into writing fresh low-level plumbing. For example, Chimera comes with first-class and built-in support for user services and other things dependent on session tracking (such as a shared session bus), implemented from scratch thanks to our Turnstile project, finally bringing functionality previously only available on distributions using systemd. This is being implemented in a vendor-independent manner so that other distributions can adopt it.
- hedora 3y ago
  Good to know. That was my first question. I hope this means they also get rid of nonsense like pulseaudio and logind. I’m a bit skeptical of the “shared session bus” though. Linux supports inode watches for things that want to react to configuration changes, and session busses add a ton of complexity (including a second authorization language, and a userland SPOF)
  - NewJazz 3y ago
    They use pipewire IIRC (which is 1.0 now!!). And they have a custom alternative to login AIUI.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      They’re working on it. The reason is explained in the FAQ. For now they seem to be using a different alternative to do at least some of it. I think it was called elogind?
LeFantome 3y ago
“I usually steer away from projects which are defined by what they are not. It seems to build a community whose roots are based in hostility.” This is a somewhat ironic indictment of a project opting to avoid GNU. In fact, your quote could serve as a valid argument to avoid GNU. I cannot think of a project more completely defined by what it is not. I would certainly find it difficult to argue that GNU and its founder have not been a source of discord and hostility. The Open Source movement is a direct response to the hostile politics of GNU and Free Software. In the case of Chimera Linux though, the founder has been pretty clear that they made their choices for engineering reasons and not political ones. There are lots of GNU packages in Chimera if you want them.
- xcv123 3y ago
  GNU is defined as what it is; that it is an operating system and that it is free software. "What is GNU? GNU is an operating system that is free software—that is, it respects users' freedom." https://www.gnu.org https://www.gnu.org Although GNU stands for "GNU is NOT Unix" that doesn't count as its a boomer hacker meme that started before GNU.
  - akosoaaafjdr 3y ago
    I'll add that most anti-GNU people I know in the BSD space and related projects are not at all against GNU politically speaking or it's ideals or the free software movement. We mostly think that a variety of terrible technical decisions have been made and allowed to metastisize over the years, and that they are largely unfixable so long as Linux remains an operating system devoted primarily to ease of use, popularity, and packaged for non-professionals. A lot of this happened rather early on due to the influx of hobbyist programmers from the PC space, and so I think the GNU userland was mostly doomed from the beginning due to the qualifications (or lack thereof) of its programmers when important foundational design choices were made (they are better programmers and more professionally qualified these days, but they aren't about to roll back most of these foundational mistakes because it would collapse the whole thing like a tower of Jenga blocks). Those goals actually align a lot with the GNU philosophies and so I support the Linux community fully in that way and for making free software available to as many as possible. But technically speaking, GNU userland is a pile of dog shit, and you've really got to rip it out and start from scratch like Chimera is doing as a bare minimum to actually make any kind of progress there.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
There is this bit (emphasis mine) >This means Chimera is not a GNU/Linux system, as it utilizes neither GNU utilities, nor GNU libc, nor GNU toolchain. However, *the project is not anti-GNU/GPL*, and its userland choice is primarily technical. Users are generally free to use whichever software they like. https://chimera-linux.org/about/#alternative-userland https://chimera-linux.org/about/#alternative-userland This quote from the faq literally made me laugh out loud: >Another side of the coin is the so-called “systemd-free community”, which tends to spread a lot of misconceptions and frankly deranged opinions that end up hurting any sort of positive effort. Chimera as a project denounces such people, and is explicitly not a part of this community. Such people should also not view Chimera as some sort of haven, because it is not. The project is explicitly anti-elitist and aims to find constructive solutions. https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq Anyway, I wonder if they should be emphasizing security more on their homepage. >Being a single lightweight package, it makes hardening the userland a lot easier too. It is possible to compile the Chimera userland with CFI and other techniques very easily, and it applies to all of the tools. With GNU tools trying to using these tends to fail, and addressing the issues becomes harder because it is out of our control and involves a much chunkier codebase where more can go wrong and where things are harder to track down. https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq I would like to see more security-focused operating systems. And simplicity is obviously quite valuable for security. Perhaps they could find a nice niche as an accessible, UX and desktop-focused competitor to OpenBSD? Qubes is nice for desktop security, but it requires a powerful machine, and also maybe I could run Chimera in a qube some day for defense-in-depth :-) One advantage of a desktop focus is someday you could make money selling laptops with preinstalls. I'll bet a lot of people would buy a cheap security-focused laptop to manage critical accounts, infrastructure, private keys even. Especially big companies that care about security. Then roll your profits into creating a great bug bounty program for your OS, in a virtuous cycle.
q66 3y ago
i believe you are just making assumptions here; debian in this context does not count as a "simple system", if anything it's as complex as a distro can be and its packaging approach is a polar opposite of chimera's i still like debian either way, because it's a nice community with good values/principles that has provided and still provides great value to the ecosystem, but it can also often be very fragile the "just works" point of chimera stems from how things are built; everything it comes with is made to be "install and go" without having to go extra length to enable and set it up (while still being entirely transparent to the user), while being deterministic (packages in general don't rely on install hooks etc.) to ensure safe upgrades and easy auditing, and all that in a framework of a system that has a fraction of the complexity of a large distro and is maintainable by a small team we make it consistently clear that it's not a reactionary project (https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq, https://floss.social/@chimera_linux/111553324359284350 https://floss.social/@chimera_linux/111553324359284350, etc) and has no hostility to GNU or any of the projects we use alternatives to by default (and anybody displaying such hostility is unwelcome in the community)

mig39 3y ago

> If that's the aim then just state that. At the top of the first page, under the Chimera Linux logo: "A modern, general-purpose non-GNU Linux distribution"

darkwater 3y ago

Came here to paste the same quote, just to highlight how disconnected from reality can be advertising "does not have to require endless setup" and then describe a rolling update distro, focused on power users and based on FreeBSD userland with a Linux kernel.

fmoralesc 3y ago

Not just not GNU: they also ditch systemd for dinit, syslog-ng and a bunch of homegrown plumbing: > We are also putting a lot of effort into writing fresh low-level plumbing. For example, Chimera comes with first-class and built-in support for user services and other things dependent on session tracking (such as a shared session bus), implemented from scratch thanks to our Turnstile project, finally bringing functionality previously only available on distributions using systemd. This is being implemented in a vendor-independent manner so that other distributions can adopt it.

hedora 3y ago
Good to know. That was my first question. I hope this means they also get rid of nonsense like pulseaudio and logind. I’m a bit skeptical of the “shared session bus” though. Linux supports inode watches for things that want to react to configuration changes, and session busses add a ton of complexity (including a second authorization language, and a userland SPOF)
- NewJazz 3y ago
  They use pipewire IIRC (which is 1.0 now!!). And they have a custom alternative to login AIUI.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    They’re working on it. The reason is explained in the FAQ. For now they seem to be using a different alternative to do at least some of it. I think it was called elogind?

LeFantome 3y ago

“I usually steer away from projects which are defined by what they are not. It seems to build a community whose roots are based in hostility.” This is a somewhat ironic indictment of a project opting to avoid GNU. In fact, your quote could serve as a valid argument to avoid GNU. I cannot think of a project more completely defined by what it is not. I would certainly find it difficult to argue that GNU and its founder have not been a source of discord and hostility. The Open Source movement is a direct response to the hostile politics of GNU and Free Software. In the case of Chimera Linux though, the founder has been pretty clear that they made their choices for engineering reasons and not political ones. There are lots of GNU packages in Chimera if you want them.

xcv123 3y ago
GNU is defined as what it is; that it is an operating system and that it is free software. "What is GNU? GNU is an operating system that is free software—that is, it respects users' freedom." https://www.gnu.org https://www.gnu.org Although GNU stands for "GNU is NOT Unix" that doesn't count as its a boomer hacker meme that started before GNU.
- akosoaaafjdr 3y ago
  I'll add that most anti-GNU people I know in the BSD space and related projects are not at all against GNU politically speaking or it's ideals or the free software movement. We mostly think that a variety of terrible technical decisions have been made and allowed to metastisize over the years, and that they are largely unfixable so long as Linux remains an operating system devoted primarily to ease of use, popularity, and packaged for non-professionals. A lot of this happened rather early on due to the influx of hobbyist programmers from the PC space, and so I think the GNU userland was mostly doomed from the beginning due to the qualifications (or lack thereof) of its programmers when important foundational design choices were made (they are better programmers and more professionally qualified these days, but they aren't about to roll back most of these foundational mistakes because it would collapse the whole thing like a tower of Jenga blocks). Those goals actually align a lot with the GNU philosophies and so I support the Linux community fully in that way and for making free software available to as many as possible. But technically speaking, GNU userland is a pile of dog shit, and you've really got to rip it out and start from scratch like Chimera is doing as a bare minimum to actually make any kind of progress there.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

There is this bit (emphasis mine) >This means Chimera is not a GNU/Linux system, as it utilizes neither GNU utilities, nor GNU libc, nor GNU toolchain. However, *the project is not anti-GNU/GPL*, and its userland choice is primarily technical. Users are generally free to use whichever software they like. https://chimera-linux.org/about/#alternative-userland https://chimera-linux.org/about/#alternative-userland This quote from the faq literally made me laugh out loud: >Another side of the coin is the so-called “systemd-free community”, which tends to spread a lot of misconceptions and frankly deranged opinions that end up hurting any sort of positive effort. Chimera as a project denounces such people, and is explicitly not a part of this community. Such people should also not view Chimera as some sort of haven, because it is not. The project is explicitly anti-elitist and aims to find constructive solutions. https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq Anyway, I wonder if they should be emphasizing security more on their homepage. >Being a single lightweight package, it makes hardening the userland a lot easier too. It is possible to compile the Chimera userland with CFI and other techniques very easily, and it applies to all of the tools. With GNU tools trying to using these tends to fail, and addressing the issues becomes harder because it is out of our control and involves a much chunkier codebase where more can go wrong and where things are harder to track down. https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq I would like to see more security-focused operating systems. And simplicity is obviously quite valuable for security. Perhaps they could find a nice niche as an accessible, UX and desktop-focused competitor to OpenBSD? Qubes is nice for desktop security, but it requires a powerful machine, and also maybe I could run Chimera in a qube some day for defense-in-depth :-) One advantage of a desktop focus is someday you could make money selling laptops with preinstalls. I'll bet a lot of people would buy a cheap security-focused laptop to manage critical accounts, infrastructure, private keys even. Especially big companies that care about security. Then roll your profits into creating a great bug bounty program for your OS, in a virtuous cycle.

q66 3y ago

i believe you are just making assumptions here; debian in this context does not count as a "simple system", if anything it's as complex as a distro can be and its packaging approach is a polar opposite of chimera's i still like debian either way, because it's a nice community with good values/principles that has provided and still provides great value to the ecosystem, but it can also often be very fragile the "just works" point of chimera stems from how things are built; everything it comes with is made to be "install and go" without having to go extra length to enable and set it up (while still being entirely transparent to the user), while being deterministic (packages in general don't rely on install hooks etc.) to ensure safe upgrades and easy auditing, and all that in a framework of a system that has a fraction of the complexity of a large distro and is maintainable by a small team we make it consistently clear that it's not a reactionary project (https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq, https://floss.social/@chimera_linux/111553324359284350 https://floss.social/@chimera_linux/111553324359284350, etc) and has no hostility to GNU or any of the projects we use alternatives to by default (and anybody displaying such hostility is unwelcome in the community)