Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chimera Linux

chimera-linux.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 224 posts

Re: Chimera Linux

#31

Post by the8472 »

eternityforest wrote: post #7

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…

> 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.

Re: Chimera Linux

#32

Post by celrod »

NewJazz wrote: post #18
5- wrote: post #10

i really like a lot of design choices in chimera linux (particularly around its packaging/build system), but as a current alpine linux (main pc, not docker) user, i find i still can't justify musl. i like small simple correct software, but musl, despite being all of those things, is, in my experience - slower than glibc, and in occasionally difficult to predict spots; - causes just a bit too much trouble porting soft…

[musl is] slower than glibc, and in occasionally difficult to predict spots Note that sometimes (/often) this purely due to the allocator, and as far as I remember Chimera uses a different allocator than the stock musl one.

Chimera uses the scudo allocator, which is Ajay also the default on Android and Fuscia.

Yet I can't find many benchmarks.

Frustratingly, it's listed here, but not actually included in the results: https://github.com/daanx/mimalloc-bench Might be fun trying to run the benchmarks myself.

Re: Chimera Linux

#33

Post by xcv123 »

NewJazz wrote: post #19
wavemode wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read "nonstandard" in their comment by its dictionary definition ("not average, normal, or usual"). Not that it literally violates a published standard.

Most Linux installs are going to be using Bionic libc, so still dubious to call glibc "standard". This is Linux. There is no standard. OpenWRT used uClibc until 2019.

GNU/Linux is the standard, as in most common. That's where it all started. Android is not used as a desktop or server OS.

Re: Chimera Linux

#34

Post by akosoaaafjdr »

the8472 wrote: post #31
eternityforest wrote: post #7

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: Chimera Linux

#35

Post by [deleted] »

suprjami wrote: post #3

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Chimera Linux

#36

Post by Levitating »

eternityforest wrote: post #7

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…

> 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.

Re: Chimera Linux

#37

Post by devit »

"that a simple system does not have to require endless setup and customization to be practical" and "alternative userland" don't go together since obviously any "alternative userland" is going to break lots of stuff and thus require extensive tweaking work.

Re: Chimera Linux

#38

Post by akosoaaafjdr »

xcv123 wrote: post #29
LeFantome wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

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 Although GNU stands for "GNU is NOT Unix" that doesn't count as its a boomer hacker meme that started before GNU.

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.

Re: Chimera Linux

#39

Post by LeFantome »

NewJazz wrote: post #19
wavemode wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read "nonstandard" in their comment by its dictionary definition ("not average, normal, or usual"). Not that it literally violates a published standard.

Most Linux installs are going to be using Bionic libc, so still dubious to call glibc "standard". This is Linux. There is no standard. OpenWRT used uClibc until 2019.

I am a fan of Chimera Linux and both Alpine and Void also use MUSL. But there is no denying that Glibc is the de facto standard on Linux Desktops and many desktop applications assume it.

To me, that is a bad thing and we agree that diversity should be possible.

We do not agree that “most Linux installs are going to be using Bionic”. Android uses the Linux kernel but it is not what people mean when they say “Linux”. The applications running on Android and the ones running on your Linux desktop are separate universes.

Re: Chimera Linux

#40

Post by arp242 »

eternityforest wrote: post #7

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…

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.

Post reply on HN