A modern, general-purpose non-GNU Linux distribution
Chimera is a general-purpose OS based on the Linux kernel. It aims to be clean and usable while addressing the various shortcomings of an average Linux distribution.
It does so by liberating itself from the common baggage of most Linux-based systems and doing its own thing. Software is sourced from different places and sometimes written from scratch.
Read more for details.
Chimera is not a GNU/Linux - its userland tools are based on
FreeBSD, LLVM serves as the system toolchain, and musl
provides the C library implementation.
Chimera aims to eliminate legacy cruft where possible to deliver a modern, general purpose, fully featured operating system that is simple but complete.
While the system uses apk-tools and therefore binary
packaging, it aims to be trivially buildable from source using a
build system and package collection created from scratch.
You can use Chimera on all kinds of processors, including Intel/AMD, ARM AArch64, POWER and RISC-V. Architecture tiering system ensures optimal support.
The distribution is in heavy development. Right now, it is a relatively complete graphical system with a multimedia stack and a web browser, capable of running Wayland and X11 environments, such as GNOME and Enlightenment. However, the repositories (source and binary) are subject to arbitrary changes and rebuilds, so it is not yet safe for daily use.
Initial bootable ISO images for x86_64, ppc64le and aarch64 as well as device images for select aarch64 targets and binary package repositories are now available. Check the Downloads page for links and instructions. Note that these are pre-alpha quality and are provided solely for testing purposes.
It is currently planned that the distribution will stabilize once apk-tools has released a stable 3.x version. Chimera currently relies on a Git snapshot of apk-tools.
As of today, Chimera now has binary package repositories for the
ppc64le and x86_64 architectures, as well as fresh ISO images.
Every package has been updated to latest version. That means the system comes with Linux kernel 5.19, latest version of GNOME 42, WebKitGTK 2.36.x, Firefox ESR 102, and other software.
This does not mean that the distribution is ready to be daily driven. These are still experimental, and subject to arbitrary changes and rebuilds. The repositories are currently managed manually. In the coming months, automated infrastructure as well as CI will be launched.
Within the next couple weeks you can also expect the aarch64 architecture
to be added to the repositories (alongside generic UEFI ISOs and Raspberry
Pi 3/4 images).
This is the beginning of the new project website, powered by Jekyll and GitHub Pages. Nothing much else to put here for now.