A Month on Chimera Linux
bitcannon.net
bitcannon.net
1. Bloated codebase for common utilities (I recognize this is very subjective). This doesn't apply to all GNU programs, but it certainly applies more than it does for the BSDs or commercial Unix's. Bash is a nasty shell implementation in my opinion, and there are an enormous number of non-standard options included in various basic utility programs. A traditional Unix shell distributed in an OS base ought to look much more like the ash you find in busybox or dash than GNU bash. Don't take this to mean I think everything should be a single binary.
2. Due to the bloated codebase, it's much more difficult to customize. It used to be very common for people to write their own customizations of utilities when they needed additional functionality. If everything expects GNU features, that becomes very challenging because those are not codebases that are very easy to hop into and understand over a weekend. This is how I got my start doing systems programming, and I worry that the next generation won't have the same opportunity as these things are hidden underneath a sea of complexities.
3. The C compiler and libc implementations suffer from similar problems and are similarly opinionated and larger than they had been traditionally on other Unix implementations.
4. There has been no attempt similar to POSIX of the SUS to write down a standard that others can follow. You are forced to follow a "GNU standard", but there has been no serious attempt to put any of this new defacto standard in writing. So a lot of systems programmers still prefer to stick to bare bones POSIX because it provides guidelines that the GNU project does not provide. I feel that they have at least some level of moral responsibility to put standards in writing and adhere to them given the amount of software that relies on these interfaces. There have been numerous instances of changes in GNU programs that have been handled haphazardly and without sufficient documentation or notice. For a project as dominant and mature as GNU, this ought to be considered unacceptable.
5. I don't necessarily disagree with the principles of the FSF or GNU project. I'm not a hardliner on using BSD style licenses or anything like that. However, there is certainly a political vibe you get from the GNU project and it's software that maybe isn't entirely appropriate for how important a project it has grown to be. The Linux Foundation and the kernel team has generally figured this out and done a fantastic job over the years, but the GNU project has not really matured in the same way.
These have all been negatives relating to GNU software so far, but there is also an equally long list that could be written of positives about the LLVM suite and various non GNU userlands. For some people that are maybe less irked by the GNU issues than I am, they still could benefit from having LLVM rather than gcc in a lot of cases. It's a much more impressive set of technologies in general and is now mature enough that we ought to evaluate their use as a systems compiler suite.
I'd like to conclude by saying I really appreciate the work that the GNU project has done over the years. They deserve all of our support for all the good work they've done and continue to do, and their programs will certainly continue to be around for a long time and used heavily. However, I think it's time that we try to provide at least a minimal set of viable alternatives.
Other than that, just running Alpine would seem less "exciting".
That said, an actual BSD/Linux is neat just like a GNU/BSD system (RIP Debian/kFreeBSD:(... ).
Beside that, I don't see what Chimera offers beyond Alpine.
chimera provides a comprehensive, opinionated OS, and little to nothing is common with alpine (not even the package manager, as apkv3 hasn't been deployed anywhere else)
it's probably the only linux distribution that has actual goal of having service management and other things practically comparable to systemd without using systemd, including first-class and built-in support for user services, session tracking and others; it utilizes stronger userland hardening than alpine (including e.g. clang CFI, until now only really deployed in android as far as linux distros go), has a superior (faster, more powerful, more secure) packaging infrastructure, and so on and so on
as for non-GNUness, it's more of a how it turned out thing and a means to an end, not a goal or a selling point in itself (it never really was that), however any sort of "why not use GNU" question is itself fallacious, considering this is a from-scratch project and there are always choices to be made (and there is no reason not to choose the one that fits better and provides practical advantages)
the faq has a lot of more detailed information: https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq
That's much more exciting than this.
For those of us interested in OSes and tech, and not video games, anything to do with consoles is dull, dull, dull.
(I used to play games, in the 8-bit and 16-bit era, when the hardware was so poor it was all about gameplay not graphics. Now it's all about super-slick 3D graphics by teams of hundreds, and the gameplay has just gone away. They all look the same and play the same. There are 3 games in the 21st century I have found worth playing: Guitar Hero, Portal, and Untitled Goose Game. Everything else is just 3D shooting, but with slick graphics, and it's boring.)
That’s just quite simply not true, but I’m guessing you aren’t really looking to be disproved, or you would have found myriads of other worthy and unique games beyond those 3, both indie and AAA
Modelling, construction of large complex systems, of any kind, is not my idea of a fun activity. Wrapping it in pretty graphics does not make it any more appealing.
Perfectly happy for others to enjoy it. I am not saying there is anything wrong with it. Not criticising here. Just saying it's not for me.
Anyway, that's all to say I'm an FPS person, but this game has me hooked. The demo is free to play; I don't know how far you can get with the free version, because I bought it as soon as I was done with the tutorial. But the only thing you have to lose is your time.
:-)
That's good! I absolutely loved these responses, BTW. I grinned all the way through reading them.
> I think because there's a little pressure, but not much, and there's a goal (build up enough industry to support building a spaceship to escape the planet you crash-landed on)
Fair enough! To quote an old song, "This is not my idea of a good time", but if it's yours, I am 100% all for it.
About 25Y ago, I got a magazine preview of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and I gave it to my then-partner as part of her birthday present.
She played it right through to completion, first time.
It took her entire birthday weekend, and she was cursing me at several points throughout, but she enjoyed herself a lot -- and hey, cheap weekend. :-D
It took her from Friday night, installing the game, to Sunday night, landing a manned spacecraft on a planet of another star... then she slept about 10 hours and went to work.
So very much not my idea of fun, although around then, we sometimes deathmatched until dawn, too. But I am definitely not here to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't do!
I started to lose interest when Quake 3 came out. It had no local gameplay to speak of; if you wanted to play against anything but impossibly-quick local bots, then you needed to go online. But I was nearing 30YO by then, only a part-time hobbyist gamer, and online play was futile: I was and am so much weaker than any online gamer, I can't compete.
Spawn... splutch. Respawn, turn, move forward -- splutch. Respawn, start to turn, splutch.
Repeat for 5min, quit game.
Try a day later, repeat experience, uninstall game.
I have a PS2, and I did buy a few games for it. _The Driver_ was very impressive. It's just GTA, but down real streets I know well. DDR is fun.
But there is so much that is just more of the same, with a sky-high skill level as the base entry requirement. It's rather depressing. I used to enjoy this.
When the entire field has driven me away, no, I am not tempted to explore the niches and the edge cases.
It is a bit like being forced to do sport at school. As an severely shortsighted, overweight, very asthmatic child in an era before effective asthma drugs, sports were an exercise in ritual public humiliation for me. As a direct result, I don't just not like sport, I detest it with a burning passion. I don't even like to walk past a bar where there is a football match on: the chanting, cheering and jeering repels me.
In my 30s, effective asthma drugs came along, and I discovered that running and cycling can be fun... but never competitively, never with or against anyone else. I have been burned too deeply and the scars still hurt.
I used to like quick, easy, shoot-em-up games I could learn in 2min and just have fun blasting away. I don't want to spend weeks exploring, I don't want to build or model or construct or toil. I don't want vast immersive landscapes; I want a quick 1/2 hr diversion.
But the games industry doesn't seem to want the casual lightweights any more. Fine; then I don't want what it offers.
FYI there’s currently a resurgence of “boomer shooters” in the indie space: ultrakill, dusk, cultic, devil daggers, warhammer boltgun. Still a high skill ceiling, but the difficulty is adjustable. If you want platforming in the mix then Neon White is amazing if you skip the anime cutscenes. Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal are also great, if we’re looking at AAA.
You might like roguelikes like Hades and Dead Cells. You might also enjoy something like Vampire Survivors or Ubermosh
You mentioned Portal - so venturing into puzzle territory Portal 2 is also great, as is Talos Principle, Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol, Outer Wilds
Similar to Untitled Goose Game (in the sense of “cozy, low skill”) - Donut County, A Short Hike, The Frog Detective, Tangle Tower
There really is no shortage of unique and interesting games as long as you look past the annual Assassin’s Creed 42 - almost everything mentioned here came out in the past few years. Some of them you might consider “more of the same” (especially boomer shooters) - to me that’s just called “a genre”. Some of them though are completely unique one-off experiences which no-one managed to replicate
As I said below, I absolutely loved these responses, BTW. I grinned all the way through reading them.
I have Portal 2 in my Steam inventory, but I've not tried it yet. I haven't come close to finishing the original yet.
I played Rogue-likes in the old days, but I think I am more or less over that now, TBH. The same partner who I mentioned below as being really into sim-world type games got really into ADOM for a while, but it's too much of a good thing for me.
I had a very brief play of Doom 3, but it was _way_ too hard for me. :-/ I have not tried anything since. I probably don't have any hardware capable of playing it, TBH.
I've not even heard of any of those "cosy low skill" games, but I will take a look. It does sound more my speed, TBH.
"Cuphead" looked amazing and I was considering buying it, but all the reviews talked about how hard it was. Since Doom 3 was impossibly hard for me, and few reviews even mentioned the difficulty past the duct-tape-a-flashlight-to-your-gun mod, I figured if everyone though Cuphead was hard, it wasn't even worth trying. :-(
Skill levels in games are very important, and much neglected these days, IMHO. As a 55YO left-handed guy with a broken right arm that doesn't work very well and never will again, my idea of what's playable is very different indeed from the conception of someone in their 20s who grew up with immersive 3D games controlled via two-handed gamepads.
Before I broke my arm for the 3rd time in April, I was pretty competent with WASD + a mouse, even though I was about 28 when mouse-strafing was first invented. (The one-time UK Doom champion was a colleague and friend of mine. He now does data visualisation and is amazing at it.)
But I am rubbish with a joypad. I do not like them at all. That's why I didn't buy anything newer than a PS2.
That's great to hear!
> I've not even heard of any of those "cosy low skill" games, but I will take a look
Yep, there's a bunch of them in the indie space coming up recently. "Stray", "Unpacking" and "Spiritfarer" also come to mind.
Also some RPGs are completely playable with just one hand on a mouse - Divinity: Original Sin (it has turn-based tactical combat), Disco Elysium (no combat at all, but a _lot_ of great writing). A bunch of card-based games can be played with just a mouse as well (Inscryption, Slay the Spire, Thronebreaker)