Just Enough Chimera Linux ☯ Daniel Wayne Armstrong

✨ Check out this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: Last edited on 2026-04-03 • Tagged under  #chimera   #linux   #zfs   #encrypt   #zfsbootmenu  Chimera Linux is a delightful community-driven Linux distribution built from scratch that does things differently: musl instead of the typical glibc for C library, dinit over systemd for system init, and a userland derived from FreeBSD…

https://viralpique.com/just-enough-chimera-linux-%e2%98%af-daniel-wayne-armstrong/

Updated post!

Chimera Linux is a delightful community-driven distribution built from scratch that does things differently: `musl` instead of the typical `glibc` for C library, `dinit` over `systemd` for system init, and a userland derived from FreeBSD core tools.

I show the choices I make to create an encrypted, minimal system with "just enough" to provide a solid foundation to build upon further:

https://www.dwarmstrong.org/chimera-install-zfs/

#ChimeraLinux #ZFS #ZFSBootMenu

Chimera Linux does things differently: the distro is built from scratch, musl instead of glibc, init is dinit, FreeBSD userland, ...

Fresh install on my Thinkpad using OpenZFS and ZFSBootMenu. Curious to explore further. I'm thinking of a setup where Chimera is my desktop and FreeBSD on a home server.

#ChimeraLinux #musl #dinit #FreeBSD #ZFS #ZFSBootMenu

So after a week with #zfs and #zfsbootmenu on my #alpinelinux install I must say both are real gems.

Example: I made a backup of my datasets on USB SSD. You just change few zfs properties and you have not only a backup but also full, working copy of your entire system in the drawer. In case something goes wrong you can boot from it and have a great rescue system with all tools you can imagine. If a tool you need is not there you just do "apk add ...".

Yesterday I migrated my #alpinelinux install to #zfs and #zfsbootmenu. It was not too difficult even though I've done it from partition to partition on one drive. Although I wouldn't recommend it to a non techy person.
I even managed to compile zfs modules for my custom LLVM compiled kernels.

So not a big deal actually.
Looking at you @vermaden 

I think Chimera Linux is an intriguing mix of components: Linux kernel, FreeBSD userland, apk package manager, (non-systemd) dinit. I checked it out briefly last year. Now I want to take a second, closer look.

Installed Chimera Linux with Root-on-ZFS with ZFS native encryption and ZFSBootMenu as bootloader on a VM. Time to explore!

#ChimeraLinux #Linux #FreeBSD #apk #dinit #ZFS #ZFSBootMenu