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Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

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Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

#121

Post by imiric »

LeFantome wrote: post #115
imiric wrote: post #70

I 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…

That's good to know, thanks.

> Replacing /etc/apk/world to any previous state will “roll back” the system to that point.

That's not quite what rollback means, though.

Say that a new version of a display driver crashes my display server. With NixOS I could reboot into a previous configuration and have a working system in no time. If I have to keep track of /etc/apk/world changes myself, and boot into recovery mode or chroot to fix this manually, it takes time, effort and frustration I'd rather not have to deal with.

Stateless /var is a good idea, but I'm not sure it would address this problem.

In any case, I'll definitely keep an eye on Chimera. We need more distros that are not derivatives, and try to do something different. Wishing the team the best of luck, and hoping the project succeeds!

Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

#122

Post by pjmlp »

LeFantome wrote: post #120
pjmlp wrote: post #111

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.

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”.

Basically, had it not been for AT&T lawsuit, or Microsoft losing interest with either Xenix or Windows NT/POSIX subsystem, and Linux would hardly matter.

You're pointing out, in other words, that UNIX/POSIX is what matters, regardless of the package.

Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

#124

Post by hackshack »

A pleasant surprise - the KDE version works "out of the box" on my 2015 MacBook 12" (A1534). This is an unusual machine, and Linux distros tend not to support its hardware out of the box. Chimera even sees the internal SSD, traditionally a stumbling point to installing Linux on this machine.

Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

#125

Post by rollcat »

q66 wrote: post #117
rollcat wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do enjoy Lua, what I miss the most is a more complete and direct interface to POSIX - possibly as a compile-time option, to accommodate the existing embedded use cases.

What would you say is its biggest shortcoming?

Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

#126

Post by syene »

LeFantome wrote: post #107
nerflad wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one sticking point for GNU users can be that BSD utils are more strict about positional order of e.g filename parameter and input options. rm ~/foo -rf || rm -rf ~/foo I was forced to get used to BSD syntax when I switched to MacOS but now I prefer it...

Thank you for the answer! Even as a GNU user, I never would never have thought to put filenames anywhere but the end. I mean, with wildcards, it could be any number of filenames. You are right though, that is an important difference.

It’s unnatural to put the flags after the command. But sometimes I remember I’ve to use a flag after I’ve entered the input; other times, I notice a flag’s omission after executing it, and Control + P puts my cursor at the end, after the input.

Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

#127

Post by megous »

Defletter wrote: post #106
megous wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some windows-land programming right there. The idea that a file is something clickable, some icon with a title somewhere on the screen. And typing 5 letters is clearly not infinitely harder than right-click and rummaging through 20 item menu to find the right action. The difference is actually infinitesimally small.

I'll hold your hand while I offer this groundbreaking revelation: the vast, vast majority of people are in Windows-land. We're even having issues with the younger generations who do everything on their phone and this don't really have any concept of file systems. Get out of your echo chamber. That means getting off of HN and start looking at how laymen use computers.

My echo chamber is Norton Commander or M602 on MS-DOS, thats how I grew up to understand what a files are and how to work with them. That's how laymen used computers back then and what was thought in schools.

Key property of these was that they had command line, so you could easily navigate and execute arbitrary commands on what you see, by typing them in.

The major reason people don't use command line interface on windows or smartphones and other appliances, is because it does not have anything remotely comparable pre-installed, so they're forced to use the inferior interface.

Re: Chimera Linux works toward a simplified desktop

#128

Post by Defletter »

megous wrote: post #127
Defletter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll hold your hand while I offer this groundbreaking revelation: the vast, vast majority of people are in Windows-land. We're even having issues with the younger generations who do everything on their phone and this don't really have any concept of file systems. Get out of your echo chamber. That means getting off of HN and start looking at how laymen use computers.

My echo chamber is Norton Commander or M602 on MS-DOS, thats how I grew up to understand what a files are and how to work with them. That's how laymen used computers back then and what was thought in schools. Key property of these was that they had command line, so you could easily navigate and execute arbitrary commands on what you see, by typing them in. The major reason people don't use command line interface on w…

Apologies but you simply have not grasped the sheer difference in scale between now and then: the number of people who are reasonably competent with a terminal nowadays would absolutely dwarf the total number of people who owned computers then... and the former are an undeniably tiny minority in the total number of people who own computers now. You really, really need to get out of your bubble.

> The major reason people don't use command line interface on windows or smartphones and other appliances, is because it does not have anything remotely comparable pre-installed, so they're forced to use the inferior interface.

If you say so, but you'll have to forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for the CLI-smartphone revolution.

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