- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
I just found about this distro, which is relatively new (2021). Its specificity is that it doesn’t features any GNU software by default, which I find interesting.
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I was confused.
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What’s wrong with GNU?
It’s not Unix.
I’ve HURD that
🥁 🐍
I see what you did there…
It’s not about GNU being wrong or not, it’s about having the choice.
Yeah, you have the choice of have your software be controlled by companies that could just stop licensing it.
But the point of GNU is to disallow closing down sources. Companies don’t like that, because it’s not profitable. They need non gnu stuff so that they can build money printing closed gardens with it.
Not using GNU software doesn’t mean you don’t use any copyleft licenses or GPL.
GPL, also known as GNU GPL. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License
The reason for non GNU distros is to maintain the right of closing down the source of whatever product you build with it, disallowing the customer’s software freedoms.
It would be pointless to have a non GNU system with other copyleft protections, because that’s counter to the reason why they exist, in the first place.
What they are saying is that you do not need to use GNU software ( a specific set of software from the Free Software Foundation ) to use GPL software.
The GPL is a license. The G in GPL stands for General, not GNU. It is sometimes called the GNU GPL as the GPL was originally conceived for the GNU Project. Much like the G in GTK stands for GIMP but now GTK itself is far bigger than the GIMP Project, the GPL is much bigger than GNU.
GNU is a software distribution, one with the original aim of creating a free UNIX ( or POSIX OS rather ).
As a percentage of software included, the amount of actual GNU software in a typical Linux distro is quite small actually. There may be a lot of GPL software but the majority of it is not GNU. Look no further than the Linux kernel itself for an example of that. Your desktop environment may be another. Most of your graphics stack is probably MIT licensed though. There is more MIT licensed software in a Linux distro than anything else and the MIT license predates the GPL. There are many other licenses used as well of course with BSD and Apache being a couple of other major ones.
Chimera is proof of what I am saying really. It is essentially GNU free by default. Yet, if you looked at a typical Fedora install, it would be the same software you use on Chimera. Avoiding systemd ( not GNU ), GNU utils, GCC, and Glibc are important design decisions but those are going to be a small fraction of the software installed.
I happen to find the GNU stuff a bit overcomplicated and bloated. I feel the same about Systemd. So, I like the choices Chimera has made.
The “reason” for “non GNU” distros is certainly not so they can be shut down. Technical choices are made for other reasons. Some of us find “permissive” licenses more free than the GPL. The idea that non-GPL is unsafe and will get shut down is not born out in practice as evidenced by the fact that there is more healthy, long lived non-GPL Open Source software than there is GPL software.
Non-GPL software will stay free and Open as long as there is a community around it. Sure, if there is no community and we are leeching off a company, they could take future versions away from us. But if we are just leeching, how is that wrong. It is only their future work they can take away. We still get to keep the old stuff. If there is no community, GPL software is no better. Either way, we only get the old stuff. The Internet is full of GPL and even GNU software that is unmaintained and of little use to anyone.
A negative contribution that GNU has made is the trend of its fans claiming credit for other people’s work. I do not like the term GNU / Linux as most of the software in a distro people throw that label on is not GNU. Similarly, talking about distros as though they are protected by the GPL is crazy as most of the software in that distro is not GPL.
MUSL is MIT licensed which is why Chimera can use it. LLVM / Clang is Apache licensed and Chimera can enjoy all the corporate contributed code and patents that come with that. Obviously the BSD utils are BSD incensed and again freely available. You do not need the GPL and certainly not GNU to make a great Linux distro.
This is not a rant against the GPL by any means though even GNU. I use them both and am very thankful for them. I certainly acknowledge their place in history. I just hate how both the GPL and GNU are positioned to diminish the contributions of others.
Thank you for going deeper in the subject. Software licenses are fertile ground for infinite lawyery debate. :)
I’m dipping my toes into understanding the licenses, and of course I don’t fully understand the details of all of the possible software combinations and it’s licenses implications.
I’m assuming distros could be considered derivative work, and therefore covered by GPL, when using GPL software. Which would make most closed source applications based on such distros inviable. That’s why I though about how could a non-GPL distro be useful.
If my assumption is wrong, which is perfectly possible, then I’m wrong.
Again, thank you for articulating it!
Besides what LeFantome said, I don’t understand why other copyleft protections without GNU is counter to the reason they exist.
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Oof, the most recent news posting is “entering alpha phase” which is a big no thanks for me. In addition, the main descriptive sentence says “It aims to be clean and usable while addressing the various shortcomings of an average Linux distribution.” But then doesn’t explain that. What does it consider to be shortcomings of an average distro?
Yeah it’s definitely young and not for everyone. But you gotta start somewhere ! I do agree that the “shortcomings” are not explicitly defined, but rather implied in the FAQ.
Alpine is also GNU-free afaik.
EDIT: Except for the GCC toolchain.
It’s a lot of things-free, to be fair
That’s kind of the point though, as it’s now used as a base for many containers ;)
Its still amazing how easy it is to use, you can get a desktop environment running in a couple of minutes and apk is insanely fast and easy
Would have probably tried as my main PC distro if NVIDIA drivers would work on it :(
Chimera Linux actually uses apk or Alpine Package Keeper as its package manager, they acknowledge this but despite that market themselves as if they did something revolutionary that has never been done before
had the same thought, not sure if Alpine is built with LLVM though.
Yup. It uses GCC toolchain afaik.
That’s right ! It uses BusyBox as its userland which was my main problem with it (though you can easily install GNU coreutils).
Alpine is still GCC based in the very least.
Indeed it seems so.
Just use Alpine. Chimera uses Alpine’s package manager anyway. The only reason you havent heard about Alpine in this context is because they do not claim they are doing anything revolutionary, they just strive to make a great distro.
Alpine is nice, but this one has some differences:
- LLVM instead of GCC toolchain
- not so barebones, gives you more ready-to-go installation
- obviously not so lightweight
I thought the whole point of alpine is it’s lightweight, given its use in so many docker containers
I was stating that this Chimera isn’t that lightweight.
They are saying these are the difference Chimera has
I already used alpine for a few years, before containers were a thing. I heard about it exactly because it was advertised as a distro without GNU components, which was revolutionary at the time.
You sound weary with that kind of comment, I wonder what bother you so much about seeing a new distro pop up ?
This is kind of intriguing. I like FreeBSD’s userland tools a lot better. Have you tried running it? If not, I might see what it’s all about. The GNU toolchain is a mixed bag. Some of it is really well documented, some stuff average, and others is just a dog’s breakfast.
I only learnt about it today, so I couldn’t check it. I have this project of building my own distro using musl and a non GNU userland, and it is a very annoying process, so I felt like I should share this one.
I can only imagine that this project is not an easy one! Wishing you the best with it.
I have been running it for a while. It is mostly awesome.
A non-trivial amount of software assumes Glibc though and so you will have the odd hiccup because of MUSL. I think one of the goals of Chimera is to improve that situation.
I have one old laptop where I installed Gentoo with musl+llvm profile. It’s fun to tinker with. If I need to run any game binaries, I guess I’d need to run some containers…
People are going to focus on the GNU free aspect, and I like that about Chimera. That is not the right way to understand the project though.
The creator of Chimera Linux was one of the core contributors to Void Linux. Chimera is an attempt to create a distro with a similar technical philosophy from somebody that thinks they can do better with slightly different choices.
Sure, go ahead, use licenses that let Apple steal everything later.
Not using GNU software doesn’t mean you don’t use any copyleft licenses or GPL.
It is good to have a diversity of software. That doesn’t make it stupid. Most of the alternatives to GNU programs are GPL licensed anyway.
This is patently false. Most alternatives to GNU software are permissively licensed (MIT, BSD, Apache, etc.). Just look at musl, clang, bzip2, and the various “new” userland replacements like ripgrep, neovim, bat, exa, dust, etc. The one notable exception is busybox which is GPL 2.
I don’t know why this trend exists, but I am constantly disappointed that talented young open source devs choose to sacrifice software freedom just because it will make their software easier to integrate in proprietary contexts. This strikes me as pure vanity or greed on the devs part so that their software is more popular and maybe even monetizable.
I hope that trend halts, but time will tell.
MIT, BSD, Apache, are all cuckold licenses
Arguing over licences to judge how much a piece of software is worth is sterile IMO.
If you personally cannot use software that’s not GPL’d, then it’s fine. But there’s no need to sound condescending like this, it brings absolutely nothing to the table. This could only result in a flame war (and it already is unfortunately, seeing the comments below), which is kind of sad.
So yeah, no prob mate, this is not for you, we get it. See you on the next thread 🫡
Sounds like an interesting systemd free Linux distro and what’s not to like about the BSD userland. Thanks for sharing.
I heard about this a little while back. I think it’s interesting, and it’s nice to see someone try something slightly different. The creator is obviously opinionated about how their distro should work. At least it’s not just another debian/ubuntu based distro.
I could waste a lot of time on this :)
This means Chimera is not a GNU/Linux system, as it utilizes neither GNU utilities, nor GNU libc, nor GNU toolchain. The system is bootstrappable almost entirely without any GNU components (other than make) and is capable of booting without them (however, most people will have some).
I’d guess they’ll move to some bsd make at some point.
Good luck with that, with the amount of Programmers that use the Gnuism for make, I would say that no developer can patch that amount of software
Uh. That would be huge undertaking indeed.
Let me guess all these makefile generators create gnu-style makefiles too?
Didn’t know that those projects existed, I have always written makefiles from begining based myself on the dwm makefiles :)
But a quick Google search and the first project that appears say that:
A simple makefile generator that can generate makefiles for: GNU-make targeting MinGW, clang-cl or MSVC.
This is nice. Shame it won’t support systemd.
Turning this a little around by saying: systemd doesn’t support musl.
I remember reading somewhere that systemd specifically uses some gnu extensions of glibc, and thus cannot be built against any other libc implementation (at the moment).
