Published 2026-10-18 19:55
\nLike many others in the free software community, I've been been growing\napathetic with the whole thing, lately. One project after the other - and one\nLinux distro after the other - embrace the proprietary world destroying\nplagiarism machine. I've been questioning the point of it all. Why make the\neffort of writing software, and publishing it, only for huge corporations to\ngobble it up, while blatantly ignoring the license?
\nI felt Debian's embrace of it the worst. To me it has been a community-focused\nconstant. Until it wasn't. That isn't to say I feel Debian owes me anything.\nThey don't. But it still made me sad.
\nBut I still like computers. Coding and tinkering is fun. Unix-like systems are\nwhere I feel comfortable. But, if possible, I'd like to use something that\naligns more with my values than my previous go-to, Debian, does.
\nI've been looking into community-focused distros that have firm LLM policies.\nWhile doing this I came over the post «Creating distro build tooling for a\nsmall community» on the\nChimera Linux website. I was intrigued. They also\nreject LLM contributions completely.
\nIt's not just their firm focus on community that makes Chimera interesting,\nthough. They've also got a tech stack that deviates from mainstream Linux.\nChimera uses musl, not glibc, it uses a\nFreeBSD-derived userspace, not GNU coreutils, and it uses\ndinit, not systemd.
\nThe latter, not using systemd, required a bit of research. Not because it's a\nbad choice, but because some of the discourse among non-systemd-users is\nfrankly bizarre. But Chimera has my back here too. Chimera «is explicitly\nnot a part of this community».
\nI was sold, and quickly installed Chimera. Suddenly I was back to when I\ndiscovered Linux in the early 2000's, poking around something new and fresh.\nThis time I knew my way around, but a new init and service manager, the\nFreeBSD-based userspace and new-to-me apk-package manager meant I had to learn\nsome new tricks. It's loads of fun.
\nOne thing that stood out in the blog post Iwas\n«[…]Every user can be a maintainer. It shouldn't be unnecessarily intimidating.\nWe don't gatekeep here when possible. You should also be having fun using the\nsystem and being here.».
\nThe barrier to entry for contributing to many Linux distributions these days is\npretty high. Chimera makes it an explicit goal to make contributing easy - and\nI'd say they've succeeded. The packaging tools, and the format you write\npackages in, are both easy to learn and easy to use. As of writing, I've got\none new package and one update accepted into «cports», Chimera's package\nrepository.
\nMore importantly, I made mistakes when contributing, and I was met with advice\nand suggestions on how to improve, not with hostility or rejection. What I\nfirst tried to submit wasn't good enough, but I was given a chance to improve -\nand I did.
\nThis welcoming, friendly atmosphere, in my experience, extends to the rest of\nthe community. I've been talking and asking questions in the #chimera-linux\nIRC channel on OFTC. People\nwere more than happy to lend me a hand, give me hints and even just chat.
I am. There's LLM code in projects upstream from Chimera, perhaps most notably\nthe Linux kernel. It's impossible to avoid it at this point, and still be left\nwith a usable system. I still think there's value in a project taking a stand,\nas much as it can, and I think there's also value in non-LLM forks like\nvim-classic and\nopentmux. I'm happy to be in a\ncommunity of builders that take a stand.
\nIf you think this sounds interesting, I urge you to try out Chimera\nLinux. That said, it's not alone, even though many\nof the largest Linux distributions, and *BSDs, are embracing LLMs. Elementary\nOS, Gentoo Linux, Asahi\nLinux and Nura on the Linux\nside, and NetBSD on the BSD side, are also options.
","headings":[{"level":1,"text":"Finding a home amidst the wreckage","id":"finding-a-home-amidst-the-wreckage"},{"level":3,"text":"Discovering Chimera Linux","id":"discovering-chimera-linux"},{"level":3,"text":"Making it easy to contribute","id":"making-it-easy-to-contribute"},{"level":3,"text":"But, Eskild, you're still running LLM-generated code","id":"but-eskild-you-re-still-running-llm-generated-code"},{"level":3,"text":"There are others","id":"there-are-others"}]}}