Chimera Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Chimera Linux Average rating 10 from 1 review(s) What are your thoughts on Chimera Linux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 20241027 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 20241027 Rating: 10 Date: 2024-11-28 Votes: 25 I came across Chimera Linux in 2023 when I was looking for distributions other than Artix Linux that use the Dinit init system and service manager, as it is super fast, stable and easy to use. I found the unusual combination of Chimera Linux's system components quite intriguing and tried it out. The deeper I delved into Chimera, the more I learnt about the shortcomings of other distributions. What makes Chimera so special is not a single feature, but the combination of many well-chosen components. Everything together results in a really smooth-running and stable system. The focus on reproducibility and easy cleaning of an existing installation also stands out here. The APK 3 package manager contributes a lot to this. Only the explicitly installed packages are stored in the plain text file /etc/apk/world (i.e. a kind of list of the differences to the standard system) and the rest is done by the programme that internally draws a dependency graph. If you remove a package from the list and then run 'doas apk add' or uninstall a package with 'doas apk del PACKAGE' (which is equivalent to deleting it from the list and running apk add), all dependencies that are no longer required are uninstalled. This is a much cleaner solution and much smoother than all the other package managers I have come across on Linux and OpenBSD, as the list in /etc/apk/world contains only the really relevant information and thus remains very short and manageable for humans. The fact that the much leaner doas is used instead of sudo is already an indication that Chimera Linux also uses many good solutions from the BSD world, which are otherwise rather uncommon in Linux distributions. I also think the idea of using musl libc instead of glibc, which means that Chimera Linux is not binary compatible with most other Linux distributions, but at the same time providing flatpak in the repository by default, which solves the disadvantage of a package manager that is not widely used and the lack of binary compatibility due to musl libc, is ingenious. This automatically provides sandboxing for non-open source software and software that is not provided by the distrubtion itself and solves the dependency problems of old or non-open source software. Another choice that keeps the base system clean. For lovers of ZFS, Chimera Linux also comes with well-maintained packages for this filesystem. Was this review helpful? Yes No