But I still like computers. Coding and tinkering is fun. Unix-like systems are where I feel comfortable. But, if possible, I'd like to use something that aligns more with my values than my previous go-to, Debian, does.

Discovering Chimera Linux

I've been looking into community-focused distros that have firm LLM policies. While doing this I came over the post «Creating distro build tooling for a small community» on the Chimera Linux website. I was intrigued. They also reject LLM contributions completely.

It's not just their firm focus on community that makes Chimera interesting, though. They've also got a tech stack that deviates from mainstream Linux. Chimera uses musl, not glibc, it uses a FreeBSD-derived userspace, not GNU coreutils, and it uses dinit, not systemd.

The latter, not using systemd, required a bit of research. Not because it's a bad choice, but because some of the discourse among non-systemd-users is frankly bizarre. But Chimera has my back here too. Chimera «is explicitly not a part of this community».

I was sold, and quickly installed Chimera. Suddenly I was back to when I discovered Linux in the early 2000's, poking around something new and fresh. This time I knew my way around, but a new init and service manager, the FreeBSD-based userspace and new-to-me apk-package manager meant I had to learn some new tricks. It's loads of fun.

Making it easy to contribute

One thing that stood out in the blog post Iwas «[…]Every user can be a maintainer. It shouldn't be unnecessarily intimidating. We don't gatekeep here when possible. You should also be having fun using the system and being here.».

The barrier to entry for contributing to many Linux distributions these days is pretty high. Chimera makes it an explicit goal to make contributing easy - and I'd say they've succeeded. The packaging tools, and the format you write packages in, are both easy to learn and easy to use. As of writing, I've got one new package and one update accepted into «cports», Chimera's package repository.

More importantly, I made mistakes when contributing, and I was met with advice and suggestions on how to improve, not with hostility or rejection. What I first tried to submit wasn't good enough, but I was given a chance to improve - and I did.

This welcoming, friendly atmosphere, in my experience, extends to the rest of the community. I've been talking and asking questions in the #chimera-linux IRC channel on OFTC. People were more than happy to lend me a hand, give me hints and even just chat.

But, Eskild, you're still running LLM-generated code

I am. There's LLM code in projects upstream from Chimera, perhaps most notably the Linux kernel. It's impossible to avoid it at this point, and still be left with a usable system. I still think there's value in a project taking a stand, as much as it can, and I think there's also value in non-LLM forks like vim-classic and opentmux. I'm happy to be in a community of builders that take a stand.

There are others

If you think this sounds interesting, I urge you to try out Chimera Linux. That said, it's not alone, even though many of the largest Linux distributions, and *BSDs, are embracing LLMs. Elementary OS, Gentoo Linux, Asahi Linux and Nura on the Linux side, and NetBSD on the BSD side, are also options.