does anyone have experiences with Chimera Linux?

@kaia which one?

@kaia i do :3

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@kaia CC @fiore

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@thing @kaia hhi

@snacks @kaia the obly one called chimerq linux

@fiore @kaia oh yeah, the other one was chimeraos

@kaia It's a GNU/Linux distro, except it doesn't include the superb GNU libc or superb GNU coreutils and instead inferior implementations for those 2 packages.

@Suiseiseki where GNU when no GNU by default?

@kaia
I only tried it once briefly — worked fine, but it might take time to get used to, considering it uses dinit and the package manager that Alpine Linux uses.
The person behind it used to maintain PowerPC flavour of Void Linux, so I expect it to be good, even on paper MUSL + BSD utilities look like something I might like.

@kaia glibc and gcoreutils are only 2 GNU packages; https://gnu.org/software/

Chimera is a GNU/Linux distro that includes several critical GNU packages by default - just because you swap out glibc with musl and coreutils with inferior "Free"BSD coreutils and make some other changes, doesn't magically make all the other GNU packages disappear.

wget https://repo.chimera-linux.org/live/latest/chimera-linux-x86_64-LIVE-20250420-base.iso

7z l chimera-linux-x86_64-LIVE-20250420-base.iso

2025-04-21 00:20:31 D.... boot

2025-04-21 00:20:31 D.... boot/grub

2025-04-21 00:20:31 ..... 779 779 boot/grub/grub.cfg

aand there's the GNU GRUB OS - it's GNU/Linux - end of story, but lets keep going.

Under live/filesystem.erofs, there is the root fs.

What? Erotic filesystem? (need to install erofs-utils to extract it, or to pack the rootfs, which uses GNU autotools and is GPLv2-or-later).

erofsfuse filesystem.erofs ero/

cd ero

grep 'Free Software Foundation' -r

usr/bin/grub-mkconfig:# Copyright (C) 2006,2007,2008,2009,2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

usr/bin/grub-mkconfig:# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or

usr/bin/grub-reboot:# Copyright (C) 2004,2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

usr/bin/grub-reboot:# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or

usr/bin/grub-set-default:# Copyright (C) 2004,2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

usr/bin/grub-set-default:# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or

strings usr/bin/nano |grep 'GNU nano'

GNU nano 8.4

GNU nano, version %s

cd lib/

ls libunistring.so.5 libgnutls.so.30 libgmp.so.10 libidn2.so.0 libncursesw.so.6

- GNU libunistring.

- gnuTLS.

- GNU gmp.

- GNU libidn2

- GNU ncurses.

- GNU readline (as well as libedit)

- GNU nano

- GNU less

- GNU libtasn1

That's the smallest "base image" that doesn't really do anything - I'm sure you'll find more of GNU in the GNOME and Plasma live images.

But please think twice before using Chimera, more than half of the rootfs of the base image is composed of proprietary software, as there's is 437M of proprietary software under /lib/firmware.

7z x chimera-*.iso ; mkdir fs ; erofsfuse live/filesystem.erofs fs/ ; cd fs/ ; ls usr/bin/grub-* usr/bin/{nano,less} lib/{libunistring.so.*,*gnutls*.so.*,libgmp.so.*,libidn2.so.*,libtasn1.so.*,libncursesw.so.*,libreadline.so.*,libhistory.so.*} ; cd .. ; umount fs/
lib/libgmp.so.10 lib/libgnutlsxx.so.30.0.0 lib/libtasn1.so.6 usr/bin/grub-glue-efi usr/bin/grub-mknetdir usr/bin/grub-reboot
lib/libgmp.so.10.5.0 lib/libidn2.so.0 lib/libtasn1.so.6.6.4 usr/bin/grub-install usr/bin/grub-mkpasswd-pbkdf2 usr/bin/grub-render-label
lib/libgnutls-dane.so.0 lib/libidn2.so.0.4.0 lib/libunistring.so.5 usr/bin/grub-kbdcomp usr/bin/grub-mkrelpath usr/bin/grub-script-check
lib/libgnutls-dane.so.0.4.1 lib/libncursesw.so.6 lib/libunistring.so.5.2.0 usr/bin/grub-macbless usr/bin/grub-mkrescue usr/bin/grub-set-default
lib/libgnutls.so.30 lib/libncursesw.so.6.5 usr/bin/grub-bios-setup usr/bin/grub-mkconfig usr/bin/grub-mkstandalone usr/bin/grub-syslinux2cfg
lib/libgnutls.so.30.40.4 lib/libreadline.so.8 usr/bin/grub-editenv usr/bin/grub-mkimage usr/bin/grub-mount usr/bin/less
lib/libgnutlsxx.so.30 lib/libreadline.so.8.3 usr/bin/grub-file usr/bin/grub-mklayout usr/bin/grub-probe usr/bin/nano

@kaia @Suiseiseki In our hearts and actions

@Pi_rat In the install - see the comment I just posted.