There’s no doubt that 2026 will bring plenty of new Linux releases, with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS likely being the most anticipated, set to arrive at the end of April. But this article isn’t about the usual names that tend to dominate the conversation year after year.
Instead, I want to focus on two relatively new projects that left a strong impression on me in 2025. What sets them apart is their originality: they aren’t built on top of existing distributions, and they take genuinely fresh approaches to how a Linux system can be designed and function.
And no, this isn’t about the wave of immutability that defined much of 2025, nor about distributions overloaded with tools in an attempt to be everything to everyone.
How is Chimera Linux different from Alpine? Seems very similar (
apk, no GNU, musl, lightweight)Chimera Linux is quite different from Alpine. They both use APK and MUSL (and the Linux kernel) but that is all they have in common. And Chimera uses a different memory allocator than Alpine, so the even MUSL is quite different between the two.
I would say the closest distro to Chimera Linux is the MUSL version of Void Linux.
Chimera Linux has a full userland, mostly based on FreeBSD, while Alpine uses BusyBox. This is because Chimera Linux is meant to be a full “batteries included” general purpose Linux distro. Even though Chimera Linux uses APK, it has a totally different approach to building packages via the Cports system which is the best I have found on Linux. Chimera started with the idea that the Void Linux package build system could be improved. The innovations kept coming until a whole new distro was born.
Chimera Linux uses very little GNU software (none installed by default I think) and is a non-systemd distro. This includes using Clang / LLVM instead of GCC. So it is quite unique in the Linux world.
My choice of DE on Chimera is KDE Plasma or Niri but the lead developer uses GNOME. They plan to make GNOME work on dinit (not systemd). So, that will be quite unique as well.
(didn’t read OP, didn’t keep up with chimera recently)
From the top of my head:
The init system. Usable FreeBSD utils instead of busybox overridable by gnu utils (which you will have to do because the former are bare-bones). Everything is built with LLVM (not gcc). Extra hardening (utilizing LLVM). And it doesn’t perform like shit in some multi-threaded allocator-heavy loads because they patch musl directly with mimalloc. It also doesn’t pretend to have a stable/release channel (only rolling).So, the use of
apkis not that relevant. “no GNU” is not really the case with Alpine. They do indeed have “musl” in common, but Chimera “fixes” one of the most relevant practical shortcomings of using it. And finally, I don’t think Chimera really targets fake “lightweight”-ness just for the sake of it.Thank you! Do you think Chimera will replace Alpine as the favorite for container base images? Mimalloc sounds great!
As the comment above stated, Chimera is not trying explicitly to be “lightweight” as a goal. Chimera Linux containers are pretty small but much bigger than Alpine.
Alpine and Chimera Linux do not really compete with each other.
As I said in another comment, Chimera Linux is more an alternative to Void Linux than it is to Alpine. Arch fans might like it too.
AerynOS and Chimera Linux, to save you a click.
Also I haven’t seen this cm0002 alt yet, gunna tag it. I have a strong dislike of what this user does (basically cross posting without linking back to the original, usually minutes after something is posted. It would be one thing if they just happened to post the same article as someone, but they frequently post the same article minutes after someone else). I guess it’s not really a big deal, but it makes it difficult to block them when they have a million accounts on a bunch of different instances. This is probably a bad example since it doesn’t seem to be posted anywhere else, but that makes it even more annoying in my opinion.
I do crosspost all .ml content and tag the user if it’s OC, as part of boycotting efforts against .ml. It shows in the crosspost section of your client
Not that it’s relevant in this particular case, this is my own sourced article not posted before to the Threadiverse
Why am I cross-posting .ml content?
I cross-post from .ml to the nearest relevant non-.ml comm to reduce the influence of .ml comms and indirectly, the instance as a whole, to make it an easier decision for other instance admins to defederate because one key reason I identified that admins don’t want to defederate is because .ml still has some very large comms and some niche comms.
Some highlights from the link:
"Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167
“See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342
.ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 The original transphobic Comment from Nutomic: https://lemmy.world/post/18236068
“NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035
General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510
“If you don’t support Russia then you just don’t understand geopolitics” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415
And so so much documentation on clear heavy handed censorship and bias also on the link. So much I can’t even put them all here because this comment would be really long.
I believe the behavior of its admins (the main admins are Lemmy devs) does harm to the overall growth of the Lemmy-verse and maybe even the Thrediverse (since Lemmy kinda kicked off the Thrediverse) because of its association with the devs of Lemmy and their insistence to use .ml as their personal political platform to spread harmful propaganda
On the outside, bringing up Lemmy frequently leads to comments like “Lemmy? Isn’t that the place with a bunch of tankies?” Or “Tried Lemmy, but found it full of pro Russia crap so I left”. The best way forward from that I see is to either widely defederate from .ml like the rest of the Triad, or pressure them to put a fair and unbiased as possible admin team.
But why use a million accounts to do that? You can use one, and then people will actually be able to curate their feeds accordingly.
Oh I don’t do that for that, there’s multiple reasons, but one of the bigger ones is to promote smaller instances because of the volume of posting it makes smaller instances more recognizable.
Other reasons for the multitude of accounts include making comms on fitting smaller instances (I make programming related comms on programming.dev or retro related on retrolemmy for example), protecting against the imposter problem and better interconnecting wayward smaller instances (you’d be surprised at the number of, even common comms, that smaller instances are missing out on that I discover just through my posting)
But why post with a million different accounts? That is the problem here. It’s not about supporting small instances when you use these accounts to post to huge instances like lemmy.world (which you do frequently). You could just create an account on a smaller instance, create the community with it, and never use it to post to a big instance.
You can do the same for the “imposter” problem you bring up, although I’m not convinced it’s really a problem. I honestly wouldn’t give a shit if someone used my handle on another instance - I only use this handle on Lemmy and no where else. If someone really started being a shitty person with my handle on another instance, I would just say that it’s not me and I have no idea who they are and leave it at that.
Like this is just crazy, man, I don’t know what else to say:
I specified already, people see the instances you post from and builds recognition for that due to the volume with which i post. So I rotate around which ones I post from
when you use these accounts to post to huge instances like lemmy.world (which you do frequently)
I haven’t posted to a .world comm (with the exception of linux_gaming) since the JL fallout and have moved quite a few of the comms I created there off it and am planning to move some of the larger ones I mod off there
although I’m not convinced it’s really a problem.
It actually did happen to me, and they were spouting right-winger Nazi bullshit sooo yea. Turned out it was UM (unsurprisingly) lmao
And btw some of those accounts in your screenshot are the imposter accounts like Lonestar, az.social and pawn
But some of the others I don’t post from much if at all and just make comms with them
Took me a moment to realize that Chimera Linux is a different distro than Chimera OS
JFC
Wait, they are? I thought I was going crazy and missed a big shift in the latter’s project goals! Thanks for pointing that out
Dafuck
