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It's really cool, but I get worried anytime I see something that seems to want to be a user friendly, mainstream distro, after seeing how hard Manjaro tried wit

It's really cool, but I get worried anytime I see something that seems to want to be a user friendly, mainstream distro, after seeing how hard Manjaro tried with the whole "Bring simplicity to the masses" stuff and how many issues they still have. Is this an experimental or hobby distro or does it intend to be something grandma can use? If I had to choose this or BSD, it looks like I'd very strongly considering this or something like it, but it definitely doesn't seem like an Ubuntu or Windows replacement. Simplicity is just not a factor end users consider. As a dev who likes modern software and isn't really into lightweight hacker friendly stuff... the odds of me using anything that's not at least 1% or total desktop market share is pretty low. Anyone who's not an Arch/Kali/BSD/suckless enthusiast type has a finely tuned sense of "Oh no, that makes me feel the same way that thinking about a project car does, I'm outta here". It could drill be a wonderful worthwhile project... but it's going to be an uphill battle to interest anyone but tinkerers and I always kind of worry about people, because this stuff takes a lot of time and without managed expectations it can really be a disappointment when it doesn't take off. I've tried several times to start new projects and it's been pretty hard realizing they're unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. I think getting any mainstream adoption would require changing the entire software ecosystem in general. I would imagine there would be some kind of issues trying to port current mega apps like Steam or Chrome to this. Plus, dynamic linking seems like it's not that well suited to user friendly distros meant for end users. Unless you have snap or Flatpak or something like that, I don't see how you can have cutting edge large complex third party packages without at least occasional compatibility issues. My experience with dynamic distros generally hasn't been terrible, but it always seems like there's some issue or other. Does this have any kind of AppArmor type sandboxing?

gjvc 3y ago
"""Anyone who's not an Arch/Kali/BSD/suckless enthusiast type has a finely tuned sense of "Oh no, that makes me feel the same way that thinking about a project car does, I'm outta here".""" excellent observation
- gjvc 3y ago
  think I should have said "excellent analogy" but hey-ho
akosoaaafjdr 3y ago
I mean yeah, this is transparently a BSD esque project it looks like, as in its pretty clearly tailored specifically to provide the kinds of features professional systems programmers and admins have been clamoring for from Linux for a very long time. Chimera is basically exactly what FreeBSD is but with a Linux kernel (for instance, clang/LLVM as the system compiler and lack of glibc as system libc), I'd imagine there is substantial overlap in our communities. I'll also add that I think these are worthwhile and long overdo technical improvements over the very substandard and strictly worse-than-unix situation in common Linux distros these days. So I support the project, if only to support something that can hopefully prevent Linux from completing its transition into utter shit. You are spot on about this project I think in your analysis and I think it simply isn't ever going to be something everybody will want to use. That's okay, like you said, some don't want to participate in operating system development, you are mostly looking to be a user. There are plenty of free and open source operating systems that will mostly provide that kind of experience for you. The intent with something like Chimera is probably to dogfood these sorts of improvements so that other more user friendly distributions can use it as an upstream source in the future. So maybe one day we will see a more user friendly version of this.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Always good to see ongoing research on improving OSes! I tend to focus a lot on having a clear purpose, just because I meet so many devs that don't quite understand how an non-tinkerer types see computing, and why the rest of us like Android, Web, Ubuntu, and Snap so much. I have a hard time imagining someone making even a super polished derivative end users would want, but that's perfectly fine if the audience is hobbyists with a deep interest in OS stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if the actual mainstream distros adopt some of the ideas if you discover something relevant to everyday use.
- q66 3y ago
  chimera is not much like freebsd at all, besides adopting the same core tools; it's mostly designed from scratch, and does not particularly try to "emulate" anything i do like freebsd, i used it for around a decade so it probably left some mark (just like other systems i have touched over the years, like void and debian), but chimera does not try to explicitly be like anything else - i simply do what i feel are fitting design choices
the8472 3y ago
> Anyone who's not an Arch/Kali/BSD/suckless enthusiast type Not sure if Arch should be grouped with those. On the Steam statistics it's more popular than ubuntu, and that's not counting SteamOS.
- akosoaaafjdr 3y ago
  It shouldn't, and neither should Kali. Neither of those demand the professional level skillsset that BSD and suck less are mostly tailored at. Those communities are composed almost entirely of hobbyists in the OS and systems programming space, or in the case of Kali, not really even strictly an OS project at all and mostly just people repackaging various security related stuff (which is fine of course, there is a legitimate need for some of that, it's just definitively not OS development in the way something like OpenBSD is). In that sense, both of them are products, not projects, to the vast majority of users, and that influences what the core teams choose to focus on.
Levitating 3y ago
> Is this an experimental or hobby distro or does it intend to be something grandma can use? It's an experimental hobby distro. If you want something grandma can use, you want to use use something everyone uses. Chimera is fairly niche and goes against all standards. You're always going to run into Chimera specific issues. Chimera also has a nice transparant build system that one can tinker with. As for Manjaro, I don't think it's hard to make a distro based on Arch that just works. Manjaro developers just suck.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > Manjaro developers just suck This. They cant even be trusted to renew their certificate 4 times in a row. The level of incompetency reaches new highs.
  - walteweiss 3y ago
    Oh thank you guys, I was worried the hacker news crowd has become that incompetent to start praising Manjaro.
arp242 3y ago
Expecting any project to take off is likely end up in disappointment regardless of what kind of project it is, because most projects out there don't take off. By and large you have to do these kind of things because you find it useful for yourself and/or fun, but not because you want it to take off. I also think it's fine for projects to target a specific more hobby-esque audience. Not every project has to be for everyone.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  I totally agree, but I see lots of projects with a site that looks a lot like an end user project, and some design choices that kind of seem like it's meant to be mainstream, without really being clear on what it's for. It took me a long time to learn not to expect too much, and my choice of projects has been very different since learning this. Some projects seem like they're held back by trying to be kinda-mainstream-ish, rather than being fully able to try whatever they want.
creatonez 3y ago
The website doesn't really give the impression that it intends to be a mainstream OS. Marketing seems to be "lightweight hacker distro using musl, but simpler than the others in the same category". I wish Linux distributions could advertise to existing Linux users without inadvertently causing this sort of confusion among the non-Linux tech media. Many Linux users don't want the OS to take off, because things will get materially worse in many regards if it gets popular. You often only find the new users and tech media theorizing about the 'year of the Linux desktop', or about Linux's product weaknesses in the narrow lens of comparing it to Windows. Fedora is able to balance this public image issue fairly well. In their landing page, they emphasize that it is for "developers and makers of all kinds". But because Fedora Workstation actually is fairly close to being an easy-for-all-users distro, in their "Is Fedora For Me" page, they have this paragraph that essentially explains that it might also be for non-developers as long as they are curious/enthusiastic about computers in general: > The Fedora distribution is made for enthusiastic and curious computer users that like to learn and experience newer versions of software and therefore might not suit everyone. Although the Project works hard to make Fedora as usable as possible for the widest possible audience there are inherent limitations on how fast a new software can be translated, gain accessibility features, provide the most comprehensive documentation and guidance. If you on the other hand need a stable Linux distribution that supports even the latest hardware, are willing to put some effort to help the free and open source software (FOSS) community and file some bug reports this might be a perfect system for you!
- q66 3y ago
  it's designed to be a hacker distro; i just felt like "hacker distros" frequently tend to make a lot of things overly manual for no reason primarily due to halfassed choices made when packaging things - the way things are built in chimera is so that whatever is in the repo is "install and go" - and this includes things like large complicated desktops, in general things are designed so that if you bootstrap a system from scratch (by installing all the packages in an empty root) you need to do nothing more - other than the stuff you wish to explicitly change, and this is done without involving complicated scripts or anything of the likes, vast majority of packages install by simply unpacking themselves to a degree your system package graph also defines your system configuration for things that are coarse enough to allow it; it's also easily auditable
q66 3y ago
the system does not aim to bring anything "to the masses" right now, considering the stage it's in; likely won't in the future either, as it's aimed at power users primarily you can run steam in flatpak (it's there), chromium will probably come natively in not that long, it does not seem like that big of a nightmare besides the ways chromium is a nightmare in in general (you can run it in flatpak too right now) there is no apparmor right now, but it'll come
debo_ 3y ago
In case it's useful: my mother is almost 80 and she uses Zorin just fine.
kovac 3y ago
I think user-friendliness of non-mainstream software is an acquired taste. While we are drawn to Linux and other off-road software for varying reasons, I doubt it's because we were looking out for a user-friendly OS. So, I personally don't expect any Linux distribution to appeal to the masses. Mainstream doesn't need operating systems. They just need a screen with large app icons for the few apps they use.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  There's a lot of reasons people who are a little more into mainstream tech would want Linux. If you do embedded, those systems often run Linux, and it appeals to anyone who likes the idea of one standard platform for everything, so you might as well use it on the desktop. Especially with RasPi work, which is similar enough to Ubuntu that it really does seem more or less unified. It's also free, and can run on old computers. It doesn't have any commerical incentives to leave out features, so a large linux distro can support every protocol, file format, and filesystem with no hacking and fussing and buying expensive compatibility apps. It supports lots of old windows stuff via WINE.

gjvc 3y ago

"""Anyone who's not an Arch/Kali/BSD/suckless enthusiast type has a finely tuned sense of "Oh no, that makes me feel the same way that thinking about a project car does, I'm outta here".""" excellent observation

gjvc 3y ago
think I should have said "excellent analogy" but hey-ho

akosoaaafjdr 3y ago

I mean yeah, this is transparently a BSD esque project it looks like, as in its pretty clearly tailored specifically to provide the kinds of features professional systems programmers and admins have been clamoring for from Linux for a very long time. Chimera is basically exactly what FreeBSD is but with a Linux kernel (for instance, clang/LLVM as the system compiler and lack of glibc as system libc), I'd imagine there is substantial overlap in our communities. I'll also add that I think these are worthwhile and long overdo technical improvements over the very substandard and strictly worse-than-unix situation in common Linux distros these days. So I support the project, if only to support something that can hopefully prevent Linux from completing its transition into utter shit. You are spot on about this project I think in your analysis and I think it simply isn't ever going to be something everybody will want to use. That's okay, like you said, some don't want to participate in operating system development, you are mostly looking to be a user. There are plenty of free and open source operating systems that will mostly provide that kind of experience for you. The intent with something like Chimera is probably to dogfood these sorts of improvements so that other more user friendly distributions can use it as an upstream source in the future. So maybe one day we will see a more user friendly version of this.

eternityforest 3y ago
Always good to see ongoing research on improving OSes! I tend to focus a lot on having a clear purpose, just because I meet so many devs that don't quite understand how an non-tinkerer types see computing, and why the rest of us like Android, Web, Ubuntu, and Snap so much. I have a hard time imagining someone making even a super polished derivative end users would want, but that's perfectly fine if the audience is hobbyists with a deep interest in OS stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if the actual mainstream distros adopt some of the ideas if you discover something relevant to everyday use.
q66 3y ago
chimera is not much like freebsd at all, besides adopting the same core tools; it's mostly designed from scratch, and does not particularly try to "emulate" anything i do like freebsd, i used it for around a decade so it probably left some mark (just like other systems i have touched over the years, like void and debian), but chimera does not try to explicitly be like anything else - i simply do what i feel are fitting design choices

the8472 3y ago

> Anyone who's not an Arch/Kali/BSD/suckless enthusiast type Not sure if Arch should be grouped with those. On the Steam statistics it's more popular than ubuntu, and that's not counting SteamOS.

akosoaaafjdr 3y ago
It shouldn't, and neither should Kali. Neither of those demand the professional level skillsset that BSD and suck less are mostly tailored at. Those communities are composed almost entirely of hobbyists in the OS and systems programming space, or in the case of Kali, not really even strictly an OS project at all and mostly just people repackaging various security related stuff (which is fine of course, there is a legitimate need for some of that, it's just definitively not OS development in the way something like OpenBSD is). In that sense, both of them are products, not projects, to the vast majority of users, and that influences what the core teams choose to focus on.

Levitating 3y ago

> Is this an experimental or hobby distro or does it intend to be something grandma can use? It's an experimental hobby distro. If you want something grandma can use, you want to use use something everyone uses. Chimera is fairly niche and goes against all standards. You're always going to run into Chimera specific issues. Chimera also has a nice transparant build system that one can tinker with. As for Manjaro, I don't think it's hard to make a distro based on Arch that just works. Manjaro developers just suck.

ekianjo 3y ago
> Manjaro developers just suck This. They cant even be trusted to renew their certificate 4 times in a row. The level of incompetency reaches new highs.
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Oh thank you guys, I was worried the hacker news crowd has become that incompetent to start praising Manjaro.

arp242 3y ago

Expecting any project to take off is likely end up in disappointment regardless of what kind of project it is, because most projects out there don't take off. By and large you have to do these kind of things because you find it useful for yourself and/or fun, but not because you want it to take off. I also think it's fine for projects to target a specific more hobby-esque audience. Not every project has to be for everyone.

eternityforest 3y ago
I totally agree, but I see lots of projects with a site that looks a lot like an end user project, and some design choices that kind of seem like it's meant to be mainstream, without really being clear on what it's for. It took me a long time to learn not to expect too much, and my choice of projects has been very different since learning this. Some projects seem like they're held back by trying to be kinda-mainstream-ish, rather than being fully able to try whatever they want.

creatonez 3y ago

The website doesn't really give the impression that it intends to be a mainstream OS. Marketing seems to be "lightweight hacker distro using musl, but simpler than the others in the same category". I wish Linux distributions could advertise to existing Linux users without inadvertently causing this sort of confusion among the non-Linux tech media. Many Linux users don't want the OS to take off, because things will get materially worse in many regards if it gets popular. You often only find the new users and tech media theorizing about the 'year of the Linux desktop', or about Linux's product weaknesses in the narrow lens of comparing it to Windows. Fedora is able to balance this public image issue fairly well. In their landing page, they emphasize that it is for "developers and makers of all kinds". But because Fedora Workstation actually is fairly close to being an easy-for-all-users distro, in their "Is Fedora For Me" page, they have this paragraph that essentially explains that it might also be for non-developers as long as they are curious/enthusiastic about computers in general: > The Fedora distribution is made for enthusiastic and curious computer users that like to learn and experience newer versions of software and therefore might not suit everyone. Although the Project works hard to make Fedora as usable as possible for the widest possible audience there are inherent limitations on how fast a new software can be translated, gain accessibility features, provide the most comprehensive documentation and guidance. If you on the other hand need a stable Linux distribution that supports even the latest hardware, are willing to put some effort to help the free and open source software (FOSS) community and file some bug reports this might be a perfect system for you!

q66 3y ago
it's designed to be a hacker distro; i just felt like "hacker distros" frequently tend to make a lot of things overly manual for no reason primarily due to halfassed choices made when packaging things - the way things are built in chimera is so that whatever is in the repo is "install and go" - and this includes things like large complicated desktops, in general things are designed so that if you bootstrap a system from scratch (by installing all the packages in an empty root) you need to do nothing more - other than the stuff you wish to explicitly change, and this is done without involving complicated scripts or anything of the likes, vast majority of packages install by simply unpacking themselves to a degree your system package graph also defines your system configuration for things that are coarse enough to allow it; it's also easily auditable

q66 3y ago

the system does not aim to bring anything "to the masses" right now, considering the stage it's in; likely won't in the future either, as it's aimed at power users primarily you can run steam in flatpak (it's there), chromium will probably come natively in not that long, it does not seem like that big of a nightmare besides the ways chromium is a nightmare in in general (you can run it in flatpak too right now) there is no apparmor right now, but it'll come

debo_ 3y ago

In case it's useful: my mother is almost 80 and she uses Zorin just fine.

kovac 3y ago

I think user-friendliness of non-mainstream software is an acquired taste. While we are drawn to Linux and other off-road software for varying reasons, I doubt it's because we were looking out for a user-friendly OS. So, I personally don't expect any Linux distribution to appeal to the masses. Mainstream doesn't need operating systems. They just need a screen with large app icons for the few apps they use.

eternityforest 3y ago
There's a lot of reasons people who are a little more into mainstream tech would want Linux. If you do embedded, those systems often run Linux, and it appeals to anyone who likes the idea of one standard platform for everything, so you might as well use it on the desktop. Especially with RasPi work, which is similar enough to Ubuntu that it really does seem more or less unified. It's also free, and can run on old computers. It doesn't have any commerical incentives to leave out features, so a large linux distro can support every protocol, file format, and filesystem with no hacking and fussing and buying expensive compatibility apps. It supports lots of old windows stuff via WINE.