Chimera Linux is a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

striving for the minimum complexity of system configuration while retaining and expanding on the flexibility common to general purpose Linux based systems. It uses

musl musl is a C standard library intended for operating systems based on the Linux kernel, released under the MIT License. It was developed by Rich Felker to write a clean, efficient, and standards-conformant libc implementation. Overview musl wa ...

as its

libc The C standard library, sometimes referred to as libc, is the standard library for the C programming language, as specified in the ISO C standard.ISO/ IEC (2018). '' ISO/IEC 9899:2018(E): Programming Languages - C §7'' Starting from the origina ...

implementation, userland tools from

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

, and dinit as its

init In Unix-based computer operating systems, init (short for ''initialization'') is the first process started during booting of the operating system. Init is a daemon process that continues running until the system is shut down. It is the direc ...

system. For package management it uses apk-tools from Alpine Linux, but Chimera does not re-use Alpine packages, but instead uses its own novel package build system. The distribution has no upstream and defines itself as "independent" from this perspective.

History

Chimera Linux was started in 2021 by former Void Linux maintainer "q66".

Features

Chimera Linux makes use of userland components from FreeBSD, and the

C library in-place of the

GNU coreutils The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a collection of GNU software that implements many standard, Unix-based shell commands. The utilities generally provide POSIX compliant interface when the environment variable is set, but otherwise offers a ...

and

glibc The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project implementation of the C standard library. It provides a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel and other kernels for application use. Despite its name, it now also dir ...

respectively. A strict default security model, employing the in-development dinit

system and the

userland are some of the more radical approaches. Such changes would have been very hard for a distribution with an existing user base. Core userland from FreeBSD, and the

LLVM LLVM, also called LLVM Core, is a target-independent optimizer and code generator. It can be used to develop a Compiler#Front end, frontend for any programming language and a Compiler#Back end, backend for any instruction set architecture. LLVM i ...

toolchain are employed. In this the distribution provides an alternative to the common

GNU GNU ( ) is an extensive collection of free software (394 packages ), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popu ...

-based systems, without explicitly excluding GNU tools or GPL licensed software in general. Re-thinking of the core components common across Linux distributions and re-thinking of their integration into an operating system are stated as intentionally pursued at the same time. This approach allows to skip the ' chicken and egg' problem of core system components development: If to interface a newly updated component to an "old" system or adapt a system to a "new" component instead.

Other features

* LLVM as the toolchain of choice (instead of the GCC toolchain) * musl with mimalloc as the system C library (instead of glibc) * dinit as the init system (instead of systemd) * FreeBSD userland (instead of GNU coreutils) * GNOME desktop environment using Wayland for display and PipeWire for the audio stack

Packages

Chimera Linux uses Alpine Package Keeper (apk) from Alpine Linux for its package manager utility. As of March 2025 Chimera Linux uses the upcoming version 3 of apk, not currently used by Alpine Linux.

References

External links

* Rolling release Linux distributions Linux distributions FreeBSD {{Linux-distro-stub