Over the past few months I’ve been working on a Linux distribution derived from Chimera Linux, and
it’s now available for download. The distribution is called Casuarina Linux. It swaps out musl in
Chimera for glibc to gain more binary compatibility with the wider GNU/Linux ecosystem.
Most of the heavy lifting was done by q66 in creating Chimera Linux. I used that excellent base to
build Casuarina. It inherits most of the composition of Chimera, with the exception of glibc:
- LLVM toolchain
- Dinit init system
- GNU libc
- FreeBSD derived core utilities
- apk package manager
The resulting system is compact and efficient, but still full-featured and well suited to desktop use. It may appeal to people that want a Linux distribution that’s up-to-date, doesn’t compromise on functionality or compatibility, and is easy to understand and contribute to. I’ve been using as the primary OS on my laptop and desktop for personal and day job computing since mid-April.
Read more about it in the announcement post on the Casuarina Linux website.