Chimera Linux

It absolutely does not mean "no manual programming or customization from the user required". It means no dirty hacks, like the ones mainstream distros employ to make some of the customization and programming unnecessary that is actually kind of inherent to the way Unix has traditionally worked.

That may very well be much less easy to work with from a consumer perspective, but from a systems programmer perspective it's the opposite way. Those hacks that allow for the ease of use in a GNU userland make programming a massive pain in the ass where nothing "just works" the way it should, because GNU programs and libraries are in flagrant violation of every specification and rule of thumb that has ever really mattered for Unices.

Also, it's GNU libc that has gone out of its way to fail to adhere to standards, not musl. GNU does not give a single crap about open standards, because they believe that whatever GNU is IS the standard, which apparently is your view as well. That's simply unacceptable for a lot of people.

>This means Chimera is not a GNU/Linux system, as it utilizes neither GNU utilities, nor GNU libc, nor GNU toolchain. However, *the project is not anti-GNU/GPL*, and its userland choice is primarily technical. Users are generally free to use whichever software they like.

https://chimera-linux.org/about/#alternative-userland

This quote from the faq literally made me laugh out loud:

>Another side of the coin is the so-called “systemd-free community”, which tends to spread a lot of misconceptions and frankly deranged opinions that end up hurting any sort of positive effort. Chimera as a project denounces such people, and is explicitly not a part of this community. Such people should also not view Chimera as some sort of haven, because it is not. The project is explicitly anti-elitist and aims to find constructive solutions.

https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq

Anyway, I wonder if they should be emphasizing security more on their homepage.

>Being a single lightweight package, it makes hardening the userland a lot easier too. It is possible to compile the Chimera userland with CFI and other techniques very easily, and it applies to all of the tools. With GNU tools trying to using these tends to fail, and addressing the issues becomes harder because it is out of our control and involves a much chunkier codebase where more can go wrong and where things are harder to track down.

https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq

I would like to see more security-focused operating systems. And simplicity is obviously quite valuable for security. Perhaps they could find a nice niche as an accessible, UX and desktop-focused competitor to OpenBSD? Qubes is nice for desktop security, but it requires a powerful machine, and also maybe I could run Chimera in a qube some day for defense-in-depth :-)

One advantage of a desktop focus is someday you could make money selling laptops with preinstalls. I'll bet a lot of people would buy a cheap security-focused laptop to manage critical accounts, infrastructure, private keys even. Especially big companies that care about security. Then roll your profits into creating a great bug bounty program for your OS, in a virtuous cycle.

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.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230811081600/https://voidlinux... https://voidlinux.org