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

81–90 of 224 posts

Re: Chimera Linux

#81

Post by abeyer »

q66 wrote: post #74
abeyer wrote: post #72

I think I'd be a lot more excited about this if it didn't seem to be bought into the wayland hype train. I feel like they made a lot of good decisions in being simple enough without too simple, and backwards compatible enough without too much legacy... but imho wayland doesn't fit in that same space for me (at least not yet.)

good news for you then, since there is a full distribution of xorg in the contrib repo and it's not expected to go away anytime soon (if ever)

Good to know. Their package search from the main site must not include contrib,though, as it only turns up wayland related packages, and nothing x11/xorg.

Re: Chimera Linux

#82

Post by LeFantome »

musicale wrote: post #76
sidkshatriya wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the longest time using anything but gcc was a problem. But people found clang/llvm better in many respects and persisted. Today clang/llvm is a drop in option, even to compile the Linux kernel. Similarly we should persist with musl. It’s infinitely cleaner, simpler and understandable.

As you imply, it's not really a standard unless there are multiple implementations. I am in favor of standardizing the behavior of libc and having multiple implementations that are commonly used.

There are many, many implementations of the C standard library. Every OS has one—even Windows.

There are also many other POSIX ( UNIX-like ) operating systems such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD which have their own.

Redox has a Rust-based C library called Relibc that even works on Linux.

There are also other C libraries that work on Linux such as dietLibc and of course Bionic, which is the standard C library on Android.

The problem is not the lack of a standard, it is that Glibc does not follow the standard and is itself the de facto choice for desktop Linux. Applications that assume Glibc may not work on other implementations ( like MUSL ).

Re: Chimera Linux

#83

Post by Y_Y »

SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #69
Loxicon wrote: post #67

what is non-GNU?

See [1]. Essentially the programs which most Linux distributions come with are provided by the GNU project, especially basic infrastructure stuff. Stuff like sed, less, awk, etc. However these programs have cousins in stuff like BSD or Busybox, which implement similar functionality, but have a mostly, or completely separate codebase, and some differences in what they can do and how you make them do it, with a common…

> I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as non-GNU Linux, is in fact, Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux minus GNU.

Re: Chimera Linux

#84

Post by [deleted] »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #65
NewJazz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

Happy chimera user here. It feels fast in regular usage though I use ssh much more than desktop. What’s actually amazing about chimera is the musl + clang/llvm/compiler-rt combination. It allows you to do all kinds of amazing things easily from a programming perspective. The apk 3 package manager, build system (cbuild) is also excellent. Everything feels modern and clean. Package availability is still limited and you…

[deleted]

Re: Chimera Linux

#85

Post by mynameisnoone »

dataangel wrote: post #9

So they're basically saying "our system will be better because more things will just work" but then they decided to use nonstandard libc and coreutils so actually getting existing Linux scripts and software to work in this distro will be harder .

That's also how I read it. For people who are masochists and want to invite yet more snowflake differences problems. Being too special and causing surprises leads to net negative productivity that swamps all other claimed goals and properties.

Re: Chimera Linux

#86

Post by LeFantome »

For everybody trying to figure out the point of Chimera Linux, it is Void Linux taken one step further. The founder used to be the maintainer of Void for PPC. That also explains the supported arch selection for Chimera.

My take on Chimera is that it is what a FreeBSD user would want if they were going to use Linux. They share the same compiler and userland. The build system rings a lot of bells.

At first, GNOME seems an odd choice but Chimera wants to avoid a lot of legacy and is pipewire and Wayland from the start.

Re: Chimera Linux

#87

Post by mynameisnoone »

dataangel wrote: post #55
marcus0x62 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying musk is non-standard is a serious allegation. No, it isn't. It's the GP's opinion. Standard has a few different meanings, including something typically or commonly used. As in "GNU Libc has been the standard C library used by Linux distributions since 1991." That would be, you know, a statement of fact. Musl is, at best, a niche option used by a few distros.

It's not used by any of the major ones, so in practice lots of apps will be broken. I like musl, and I link it for my own stuff but I only have to make sure my stuff works. if I had to make sure everyone's existing stuff worked glibc is the only practical choice.

Yep. There are lots of edge-cases and macros that glibc provides are difficult to emulate because they require a lot of domain-specific knowledge and special handling. There isn't really a way to use musl in any large distro without lots and lots of patching and giving up correctness and completeness. It's akin to not using ICU4{C,J} and praying that simplistic Unicode handling like normalization will magically work.

Using musl is fine for limited uses, but it's magical thinking to believe that it's at exact feature and functional parity replacement for glibc.

Re: Chimera Linux

#88

Post by NewJazz »

j4ah4n wrote: post #49
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…

Off topic, but would you have any suggestion or resources to start using alpine on a main pc? I have a System 76 machine I wouldn’t mind trying this out with.

Their homepage is pretty straightforward. As is the setup-alpine installer.

Re: Chimera Linux

#89

Post by krupan »

If you are along time GNU user (meaning GNU grep, sed, less, awk, find, tar, etc., etc.) this will be way more frustrating than you realize to use. Having lived in the UNIX days, I can still remember the subtle differences in all the command-line tools driving me nuts. This is actually how the GNU tools became popular even before Linux was a thing, you could install them on irix, hpux, sun, any UNIX, and you wouldn't have to deal with the quirky differences between hpux grep and irix grep (for example).
Post reply on HN