News

Latest 10 recent news (see index)

February 14, 2025

New images

The 20250214 set of images is now published.

This took longer than originally expected but there have been major changes that warranted waiting a bit longer for it.

Changes

The images come with a fresh version of apk-tools. This version finally supports several features that we began using, particularly variable expansion and being able to migrate most of its files into a system-wide /usr location.

That means you finally have a way to properly change your mirror of choice without having to mess with the repository definitions. The process of doing that is in the relevant documentation section.

The repository definitions have been updated to use the new v3-style index naming, though backwards compatibility is also provided.

Kernel 6.13 is used in the new images. That means updated hardware support and other things.

Both the GNOME and Plasma images (the latter is still experimental) come with the latest versions of their respective desktop environments.

Various fixes have been made to allow the live system to work better and more seamlessly on more machines.

Additionally, 32-bit PowerPC images are now a standard release architecture and included in the batch. We have some plans to also introduce support for the LoongArch64 ISA, which may join them next time.

Due to all of these changes as well as updates in the infrastructure, this new set is the recommended baseline for installation. Older images have an out of date package manager and installation scripts, which may be problematic with the current layout.

December 27, 2024

Entering beta

Today we have updated apk-tools to an rc tag. With this, the project is now entering beta phase, after around a year and a half.

What actually changes?

In general, this does not actually mean much, as the project is rolling release and updates will simply keep coming. It is more of an acknowledgement of current status, though new images will be released in the coming days.

Changes since alpha

At the point of entering alpha, the cports tree had roughly 1000 templates, most of them in main. There was a single large desktop (GNOME) and a single major web browser (Firefox) and an assortment of other software.

At this point, the tree contains ~2800 templates, i.e. almost 3x more. We have all major desktop environments, all major browsers, and overall much larger collection of both small and large programs.

The repo was also at ~6000 commits at the time, by 11 authors; now it’s almost 20000 commits, by over 100 authors.

Significant under-the-hood improvements have been made in service management, our build infrastructure, the cbuild build system which is now significantly more powerful and has much better UX, global switch to the mimalloc allocator, stateless /var and progress towards stateless /etc, improvements in core userland, introduction of libdinitctl, introduction of sd-tools, and a lot more.

Infrastructure situation and sponsorship

Currently, we support 5 architectures (aarch64, ppc64le, ppc64, riscv64, x86_64), 3 being tier-1 (aarch64, ppc64le, x86_64).

This list will likely remain stable in 2025. The infrastructure is self-funded and we control all of it. Besides the unsatisfactory RISC-V situation, all of the machines are sufficient.

It would be nice to introduce CI for more architectures during next year, particularly AArch64.

Chimera is a FOSS project and therefore does not and will not take donations, and is driven by its community. However, for the past half a year, I (q66) have been working on the project through my employment at Igalia, thanks to a contract with Rubicon Communications, LLC (aka Netgate). This collaboration will continue during 2025 and is a significant help and a boost for the project’s progress, as it lets me dedicate much more time.

Therefore, huge thanks to Netgate for giving me this opportunity.

Plans for 2025

During 2025, some notable things will be coming too:

And likely much more than that. On the infrastructure side, we plan to automate more things, and introduce better build hardware for the RISC-V architecture if possible, as right now it is a major bottleneck.

Upcoming images

A new image set will be released before end of the year to match this announcement. They will come with various fixes and a new version of apk-tools.

December 04, 2024

New images and welcoming new committers

As of 04 December 2024 new images have been published.

While there weren’t originally supposed to be any more images before reaching the beta phase, a new apk feature proved to be necessary.

Other than that, it’s an incremental refresh with software updates.

New committers

We have two new committers, Jami Kettunen (deathmist) and Isaac Freund (ifreund). Both have been a part of our community for a long time and are active contributors; congratulations :)

Unfortunately, another of our contributors, nekopsykose, has left the project recently. We thank her for being a part of the community and all of the work over the years and wish her the best.

Changes

The apk-tools package manager has been updated again, ahead of implementing a new kernel backup system. New static binaries, new OCI images, and other things have also been updated to use this new version of apk.

That means this image set is now the minimum that can be used to perform new installations, unless you update apk-tools in the live environment beforehand.

Various software has been updated. Linux kernel 6.12 is now the default, most notably.

The ISOs now have a bootable partition in the protective MBR. That means compatibility with certain x86 BIOS machines should be better.

Upcoming changes

This is likely the last update before entering the beta phase, for real this time.

October 27, 2024

New images

As of 27 October 2024 new images have been published.

These are an incremental refresh with new software, as well as new image types. They bring various minor changes.

Changes

The most notable change is a major update of apk-tools. From now on, we will start requiring changes that were made to it, so using older images to install is no longer supported.

Experimentally, KDE Plasma ISO images are now available alongside the GNOME images. The GNOME images are based on GNOME 47, while the KDE images use Plasma 6.2.

Additionally, the ISO images now use EROFS for its root file system instead of SquashFS. This brings increased compatibility and increased performance while in the live environment, in exchange for a minor increase in image size.

Last but not least, the “force console” GRUB options are now gone in the graphical ISOs, but the functionality is not. Adding nogui to kernel command line in GRUB’s editor will achieve the same.

Upcoming changes

This is likely the last update before entering the beta phase.

July 12, 2024

Welcoming a new committer

Since @triallax has been doing a bunch of excellent work in addition to being a great community member, we have decided to grow the cports committers list a bit.

Additionally, @nekopsykose is now a project owner, so it’s no longer just @q66.

Congrats to both :)

July 07, 2024

New images

As of 07 July 2024 new images have been published.

These are an incremental refresh with new software. They bring various minor changes.

Changes

The biggest visible change is that core and minimal rootfs tarballs are no longer distributed; you are expected to use either the full or bootstrap tarballs. Any regular installation is expected to use the base-full metapackage at very least (unwanted components can be removed by masking them in the apk world file).

The images are still based on GNOME 46 and kernel 6.6, but with all latest updates pulled in.

Otherwise, the images represent 3 months of software updates in cports, which are reflected here.

Upcoming changes

Before the beta release, there will be at least one more image refresh. The beta release is expected most likely during the fall this year.

April 21, 2024

New images

As of 21 April 2024 new images have been published.

These are mainly an incremental refresh. They bring a variety of package updates and minor quality of life improvements, and most importantly updated apk-tools.

Changes

The graphical images are based on GNOME 46 and Linux kernel 6.6, alongside a variety of up to date software, such as the LLVM 18 toolchain.

The apk package manager in this set fully supports the zstd compression. The distribution will start rolling out packages compressed with zstd in the coming days (no world rebuild will happen yet but newly built packages will be compressed with it).

The installer scripts had minor changes done in them, some of them user-visible. Notably, chimera-chroot will now alter the prompt to be less confusing, and it makes bind-mounted pseudo-filesystems properly unmountable.

The ISOs are newly based on GRUB 2.12. If this causes any regressions, please report them. All the ISO images were tested on their respective architectures without any issues found.

The MNT Reform images have been dropped. The packaging of the bootloader was unsatisfactory (done from binary builds) and there haven’t been any opportunities to figure out a proper source build. Additionally, the vendor now seems to be favoring newer SOMs by default. If you are interested in maintaining support for this or any other hardware, please reach out to us on one of the official channels.

Upcoming changes

There will be at least one more refresh before beta. Beta will likely come with a world rebuild, which means zstd for all packages.

January 22, 2024

2024 image refresh

The images have been refreshed yet again.

Most importantly these bring the 6.6 LTS kernel, an upgrade from the 6.1 series (except Raspberry Pi images, which have their own kernel) alongside minor user experience improvements.

Changes

We have upgraded the LTS kernel series from 6.1 to 6.6. Meanwhile, the installable “stable” kernel is now at 6.7.x.

Raspberry Pi images had their firmware updated, so wireless networking and Bluetooth should work equally well on 3, 4, and 5.

The apk package manager got a fix which likely resolves the issue when some directories were very rarely created with 000 permissions. This is not yet verified however, as the issue was not reproducible and therefore it is not possible to verify it.

Minor user experience improvements include support for fstab LABEL= and the likes for swap devices, support for timedated/localed/hostnamed D-Bus services (mainly benefits GNOME) thanks to the openrc-settingsd project from Gentoo/postmarketOS, various package updates, more atomic apk transactions thanks to deployment of sysusers.d and tmpfiles.d, chimerautils fixes (e.g. stdbuf command now works properly), the lsinitramfs and unmkinitramfs commands have been fixed, the cryptsetup initramfs scripts have their module copying fixed, Python 3.12, and a ton of other things.

Upcoming changes

We will likely introduce an installer in one of the future images, likely before beta release.

December 27, 2023

New images again

A new set of images has been released once again.

This is once again a refresh without any major functionality changes outside of new software; but it does bring important changes to apk-tools as well as out of the box support for Raspberry Pi 5. It comes with GNOME 45 and kernel 6.1.

Changes

As far as live-specific changes go, the strange GRUB message about “booting in blind mode” should now be gone. This was always harmless but was causing confusion in some users.

Additionally, the version of apk-tools available in these images comes with full support for xattr metadata. That means we will stop using post-install scripts for this in repo packages and instead migrate to this. That means you should always install from at least this version of the images from now on - older images may not work correctly for installations.

Raspberry Pi 5 is now supported in the Raspberry Pi images. The support has been present in cports since October and you could always generate your own image with chimera-live, but now there is no need to as the available images will work.

Outside of that, a lot of software has been updated, which affects the live image as well. Most notably, this means using GNOME 45 now.

Upcoming changes

This is a transitional set. The next set of images will probably come in relatively near future; this will bring some more major changes, for instance the Linux 6.6 kernel (which will become the new LTS) as well as quite possibly an installer and support for zstd in packages instead of zlib/deflate.

September 15, 2023

New images

A new set of images has been released once again.

This is mostly a refresh. The previous images still work fine for installation. These new images bring updated software, and a few other functional changes.

Major updates

  1. The dinit-chimera core service set has been overhauled.
  2. NTP is active by default in the live images, so you will get correct date/time even without RTC as long as connected to the network.
  3. To avoid having files with timestamps in the future on hardware without an RTC, the new swclock service will synchronize time to at least a specific timestamp.
  4. PipeWire is now always implicitly active if present.
  5. The GNOME images no longer come with an X11 server (outside of XWayland). It can still be installed from the contrib repo.
  6. HDMI audio should now work universally, as well as sound on some laptops and devices such as the Steam Deck.
  7. And various minor changes.