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Chimera Linux is almost ready for prime time
September 05th, 2022
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Apologies for not writing in a while, in addition to having a bad case
of writer's block, I simply have not had time due to a busy work
schedule... But I digress.
For several years now, I have been using Alpine Linux, mainly because
it doesn't use the abomination known as systemd as its init system, and
it generally does things simpler than other Linux distributions. It has
a lot less GNU-nonsense than other distributions, but it still has a
small number of GNU utilities, such as gcc...
Recently a new distribution called Chimera Linux has come on the scene.
Just a few days ago they enabled their repositories, making it easy
to apply updates and new packages.
I really like this distribution because everything is compiled with
llvm/clang, and most of the userland is ported from FreeBSD,
consequently Chimera has the least amount of GNUisms than any Linux
distribution I've ever seen.
I have installed Chimera on a test server here on Linode (aptly named
chimera.zcrayfish.soy) and compiled an inetd, crond, and lighttpd for
fun. It wasn't too hard...
Here's a few things that is stopping Chimera Linux from being a daily
driver on servers:
i* bootloader installation is not managed at all by the install script
(and the documentation only covers installion on UEFI systems)
* the install directions on the Chimera website should be binding more
of the pseudo-filesystems, that way things such as reboot & poweroff
actually work at the end of the install process.
* It's not clear on how to setup static IP addressing; although for
IPv4, that could be handled at your DHCP server at least. I didn't
have any luck getting IPv6 to reliably work.
* the install script does not install the following absolutely
essential packages (required to connect to the repos and diagnose
basic networking):
* c-ares-1.18.1-r0.apk
* ca-certificates-20211016-r0.apk
* curl-7.84.0-r0.apk
* icu-71.1-r0.apk
* icu-libs-71.1-r0.apk
* jansson-2.14-r0.apk
* libcurl-7.84.0-r0.apk
* libev-4.33-r0.apk
* libssh2-1.10.0-r0.apk
* libxml2-2.9.12-r0.apk
* nghttp2-1.49.0-r0.apk
* openssl-3.0.5-r0.apk
Anyway, out of time for a more comprehensive writeup.
Relevant URLs:
HTML https://chimera-linux.org/ Chimera Linux website
HTML http://chimera.zcrayfish.soy/ my test server (web frontend)
HTML gopher://chimera.zcrayfish.soy/ my test server
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