And this is why, eventually one gets tired of all reboots, and endless variants on Distrowatch, get a computer at BestBuy, Mediamarkt, Dixons, or whatever is the local chain, run GNU/Linux on a VM, and be done with it.
Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
111–120 of 128 posts
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
did you ever try a TrackPoint, with a HARD inverted dome, and mouse buttons under the space bar? Much faster for me than a mouse any day of the week.
You mean the IBM nub? Yeah I have used them. They're even slower than a touchpad. Probably the slowest kind of mouse there is!
Maybe, but if you touch type and click at the same time, they’re faster.
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I recently left Debian again and use Void, with Opensuse on a separate drive [...], I gave serious consideration to Chimera before settling on Void [...] Have you tried to write down your goals/expectations? It seems like you're throwing distros at the wall to just see what sticks. I don't care for apt vs xbps or systemd vs openrc. My own goals are simple: - I want a "UNIX workstation", overall decent for software…
You might like Chimera Linux. It also “refuses to accept complex systems”, except it is still Linux and so does not have the limitations of OpenBSD. Chimera Linux also uses doas. The Turnstile project is a good example of Chimera Linux rolling its own when no suitable alternative is available (to replace Systemd in this case).
I see your points, but Alpine already checks most of these boxes, so for me the cost of switching outweighs any expected benefits. (I don't believe in "just trying it out" in a VM, because the real issues crop up only when daily driving.)
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I recently left Debian again and use Void, with Opensuse on a separate drive [...], I gave serious consideration to Chimera before settling on Void [...] Have you tried to write down your goals/expectations? It seems like you're throwing distros at the wall to just see what sticks. I don't care for apt vs xbps or systemd vs openrc. My own goals are simple: - I want a "UNIX workstation", overall decent for software…
Hell of a reply. I'd definitely buy you a coffee for it. Thanks for all the considerations. PS: regarding throwing distros at the wall; I used the same installation of Debian for 10 years. It was my workstation and everything else. But its direction isn't mine anymore, and I gave quite a bit of thought to my choice, ie Void. FreeBSD would be in addition, not a replacement. Also, my primary needs are far more primitiv…
I've also been on Debian for 15 years, before switching to macOS. I had a dozen very good reasons (incl. I've finally been doing the work I've always wanted to), but the "change for the sake of change" seems kinda Apple's motto nowadays, and yes it's hella irritating. Still - for me, macOS beats any other OS in that it fits most of my needs almost exactly.
And when I want a Mac that's much simpler, I also have a TiBook! https://www.rollc.at/posts/2024-07-02-tibook/>
> Oh, and freedom. That's really important.
The only true freedom is to do what you desire. For me, it's e.g. playing StarCraft. Yeah I can make it run on Linux under Wine. No, figuring out why it's broken again is not my idea of free time ;)
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#115I appreciate what the Chimera authors are trying to achieve, but I would never consider going back to a distro that doesn't support atomic upgrades and seamless rollbacks, ala NixOS, Guix, etc. Packaging issues and incompatibilities are inevitable and impossible to prevent. Giving users the peace of mind that their system can always be reverted to a known working state is priceless, and something all operating system…
Fair enough. It is worth talking about how the Chimera Linux package manager works though.
There is a file, /etc/apk/world that lists all the packages you have explicitly installed. When you add and remove packages, all it really does is change this list. Then it runs the solver and installs the package versions and dependencies required. You could move /etc/apk/world to another system and it would result in exactly the same set of packages between the two.
Replacing /etc/apk/world to any previous state will “roll back” the system to that point.
The package manger is transactional and apk commands either entirely succeed or fail. When I was testing Chimera in a VM, I ran out of drive space during an install of dozens of packages. The system was left in the same state as it was in before I ran apk.
Cports itself is very declarative. Also, unlike most distros (including Arch) there is no separate install and update step. Other than the kernel, and maybe a couple others, nothing runs after the package install.
Finally, Chimera Linux is aiming for stateless /var and /etc.
Chimera Linux may be closer to what you want than you expect.
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH depending on Python also isn't the best choice - it has become a huge and complex language, goes as far as optionally embedding another full language (Tcl, for Tkinter), all the async stuff, kitchen sink standard library, etc. I don't even know how much effort it would require to bootstrap. I would personally go with something like Lua - small, trivial to embed, multiple implementations to pick from, etc. It woul…
it's absolutely the kitchen sink standard library and "complex" language that makes it worth using, because 1) it means no additional dependencies and 2) the language is expressive enough to let the template syntax remain simple and well-abstracted have you ever tried bootstrapping python? because it's really not a big deal (the only hard dependencies are a C compiler, libffi, and zlib, though distros also add libedi…
Don't get me wrong, I love Python, and I've been a user since the 2.4 days. You brought up plenty of good reasons to use it - and my own rule of thumb is to rewrite a shell script in Python once it goes past 100 lines.
My point is that Lua-the-language provides similar expressive power to Python-the-language (including basic stuff like lookup tables), while remaining smaller and simpler to understand than the POSIX shell. It's also simpler to vendor than Python, and you probably want to vendor this kind of stuff to avoid the pain of bootstrapping / circular dependencies.
Now I haven't built a build/packaging system like xbps or apk (few people did), but I've been in charge of devops/releng at work for a decade - and if I learned anything at all, it's that it's better to start with the simplest tool that can do the job, and slowly add what you need. E.g. I wrote a tool in 2016 to replace Ansible in my team, and all of this time it's just been doing its job: https://github.com/rollcat/judo>. Turned out nobody actually needed the kitchen sink.
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's absolutely the kitchen sink standard library and "complex" language that makes it worth using, because 1) it means no additional dependencies and 2) the language is expressive enough to let the template syntax remain simple and well-abstracted have you ever tried bootstrapping python? because it's really not a big deal (the only hard dependencies are a C compiler, libffi, and zlib, though distros also add libedi…
Don't get me wrong, I love Python, and I've been a user since the 2.4 days. You brought up plenty of good reasons to use it - and my own rule of thumb is to rewrite a shell script in Python once it goes past 100 lines. My point is that Lua-the-language provides similar expressive power to Python-the-language (including basic stuff like lookup tables), while remaining smaller and simpler to understand than the POSIX s…
note: i've been doing lua for two decades and am well familiar with the language itself as well as its inner workings (far less so with python), and i've been building distro tooling for almost as long, and no, definitely not
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The obvious answer is to build on the Linux kernel. That means more extensive desktop hardware support. That means better desktop software compatibility. That means robust support for OCI containers. But Chimera goes beyond the BSD model in several ways. For example, it aims to bring the Systemd feature-set while avoiding Systemd. It also uses pipewire and Wayland. As mentioned elsewhere, the Chimera Linux founder al…
Ok, so why use any BSD components then?
Is this a real question? Instead of justifying the choice to use something good without taking the bad bits too, let me pretend you asked “what are the advantages of using the BSD userland”.
I am not a Chimera dev and they have answered this but here is what I understand….
You could argue that the GNU utils are bloated and over engineered. But that is just an opinion. As the Chimera devs point out, there is a “chicken and egg” dependency problem with the GNU utils when trying to build from source and / or in a container. The BSD utils solve this problem.
At the same time, the BSD utils are more complete and powerful than, for example, Busybox or other alternatives to the problem above.
The BSD userland solves one of the problems that Chimera Linux is trying to solve. The BSDs do not solve many of the other problems and so using everything from BSD is not an option.
I will point out that Chimera Linux and FreeBSD both use Clang/LLVM as the system compiler. Chimera uses it for LTO and certain security features.
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#119It has been amazing to read in this thread how many people seem to think that “nothing new in the UI” equals “nothing interesting about this distro”.
It really highlights how the relationship with computers is changing.
The goals of Chimera Linux have little at all to do with the UI. In my view, Chimera Linux is highly innovative and disruptive. Yet, some people can look at it and genuinely wonder what it does differently or what the point of it is at all. Fascinating.
Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop
#120And this is why, eventually one gets tired of all reboots, and endless variants on Distrowatch, get a computer at BestBuy, Mediamarkt, Dixons, or whatever is the local chain, run GNU/Linux on a VM, and be done with it.
The Chimera Linux team strives to downplay the lack of GNU because they do not want the politics.
For me, one of my favourite things about Chimera Linux is that it is both everything I want from Linux and 100% immune to being called GNU/Linux.
Chimera Linux: no Glibc, no GNU utils, no GCC, and no Systemd. As a user, I am finally free.
We should consider “freedom from being labelled GNU/Linux” as “the 5th freedom”.