Yay! Built an apk package for the Mercury compiler¹ and with a bit more fiddling got Prince² to build. One step closer to being able to do my day job on Chimera Linux.
#ChimeraLinux
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I recently got a passive cooling case for the LattePanda¹ V1 SBC I bought in 2016. I assembled the case and installed Chimera Linux on it tonight. Since my ALIX plan failed, the new plan is to host my retro site on the panda instead.
Weirdly the Wi-Fi worked to do the install but I've not been able to get it to connect post install. Not sure what's up with that.
I've been talking about it for months, but I finally followed Jami Kettunen's instructions and got Chimera Linux installed in my Yoga Slim 7x ARM laptop.
Windows was crashing every few days (while unattended) with the error "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error is caused because the system stopped responding and the hardware watchdog triggered a system reset." even after a full restore.
I'm hoping Linux is more stable.
Continued thread
New post: Trying to Get Chimera Linux Running on Pentium Class Hardware
I'm going to hit pause on this whole i586 Chimera saga, but have written it up so the effort is not entirely in vain. https://www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2025/chimera-i586/
www.wezm.netTrying to Get Chimera Linux Running on Pentium Class HardwareSince declaring in my last post
that “it was time to return to slightly less frivolous projects for a bit” I
instead spent the last week-and-change attempting to make Chimera Linux
run on Pentium class 32-bit x86 hardware.
I was moderately successful.
This was sparked by a friend linking to the
EoL page on the PC Engines website
quoting the fact that they were exiting the market:
Despite having used considerable quantities of AMD processors and Intel NICs,
we don’t get adequate design support for new projects. In addition, the x86
silicon currently offered is not very appealing for our niche of passively
cooled boards. After about 20 years of WRAP, ALIX and APU, it is time for me
to move on to different things.
This reminded me that I had two ALIX boards in neat little aluminium cases
sitting in the cupboard:
an alix2d13 purchased in 2011, and an alix3d2 purchased in 2012. My
immediate thought was the alix3d2 would be perfect for hosting my retro
website.
alix3d2
They are powered by an AMD Geode LX800 CPU clocked at 500Mhz with 256Mb of RAM.
The Geode is mostly an i686 class 32-bit x86 CPU. Instead
of installing an OS that I know works on them like OpenWRT or NetBSD I have
spent that last week and bit bringing up Chimera Linux on i586 (Pentium).
I wanted to use Chimera Linux because:
I was already hosting my retro site with it.
I has already packaged the Rust binary that serves part of the site.
Chimera makes cross-compiling that package super easy, as well as service
monitoring with Dinit.
I thought it would be fun to use a modern distro on Pentium class hardware.
The process of bringing up a new platform on Chimera Linux was interesting, but
tested me at times. Especially early on when I was getting segfaults in apk,
thus preventing anything from working.
This post aims to document the steps I took (which may not be optimal) in
case it happens to be useful.
Continued thread
I tried this on real hardware (ALIX) last night. It was a battle requiring multiple CF cards and CF to USB adaptors before I got a working combination. Then with some further futzing with grub I was able to get it to show grub and start booting, but nothing happens after that. I let it go overnight thinking it might just be really slow (it's a 500Mhz CPU), but no luck. I think the next thing I'll do is change how things are compressed—zstd might too much for this machine. #ChimeraLinux
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Full rebuild with proper i586 support is complete!
Here is an install running in a VM allocated 256Mb RAM and the CPU set to 'pentium'. These setting match the system I want to run it on: A PC Engines ALIX board.
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And it boots!
I'll probably need to do a full rebuild at some point as it seems that clang defaults to targeting pentium4 (newer than what I want) for all i?86 toolchains, which I didn't notice until late in the process. https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/61347
Continued thread
Yay `base-full` complete!
$ ./cbuild -A x86 chroot
[/binpkgs/main]
[/binpkgs/main/debug]
OK: 2841 distinct packages available
Slowly making progress on an x86 Chimera build… `base-cbuild` completed.
Pictured is only a chroot on Alpine. More packages need to be built before it can boot itself.
Weekly GNU-like #MobileLinux Update (12/2025): GNOME 48 and other goodies
LINux on MOBileWeekly GNU-like Mobile Linux Update (24/2025): Not just Q&A sessionsMegapixels 2 Alpha 2 is out, another Ubuntu Touch Q&A, a long term Furilabs FLX 1 review, a way to use OpenGL ES 3.2 on the Librem 5 in Debian, PINE64's RISC-V PineTab to gain Mobian support, and more! Enjoy!
I think it's about time I ditched Arch Linux for Gentoo. Arch has gotten easier and I've gotten bored with it. Once I've settled to Gentoo, I'd have Void Linux scratch my "Arch Linux" itch
I mean, I've already explored Linux distros with different inits. I don't think anything can stop me when I have Arch, Gentoo, and Artix wiki handy
www.gentoo.orgWelcome – Gentoo LinuxThe website of Gentoo, a flexible Linux distribution.
4 seconds for Artix Linux runit guy. More or less the same RAM & disk usage compared to its s6 & dinit siblings.
It'll go down to 3 seconds on subsequent reboots but it's alright though. This guy's up there with the Void & Chimera Linux bois.
3 seconds boot time. Beats #voidlinux and #chimeralinux by 1 second.
Without x11, it uses 346.27 MiB of RAM according to fastfetch
With xfce+x11, it hovers at around ~540 MiB instead.
I just installed xorg, xfce4, xfce4-goodies, and spice-vdagent for this one. Nothing else modified.
I guess I can now add these #linux distros to the "used/familiar list" on my #introduction post:
- Void Linux
- Chimera Linux
- Devuan
Chimera Linux 20250214 has been released with a new version of apk-tools, updated repository definitions, Linux Kernel 6.13, and 32-bit PowerPC images
Chimera Linux · New imagesThe 20250214 set of images is now published. This took longer than originally expected but there have been major changes that warranted waiting a bit longer for it.
The 20250214 set of images is now published.
This took longer than originally expected but there have been major changes that warranted waiting a bit longer for it.
Chimera Linux · New imagesThe 20250214 set of images is now published. This took longer than originally expected but there have been major changes that warranted waiting a bit longer for it.
So, from my notes:
#voidlinux: symlink a service's name from /etc/sv/ to /var/service to enable a service then sv up & down will become available for that service.
#chimeralinux: dinitctl, kinda like systemctl
#devuan: update-rc.d <service> default to get it on the runlevels, then enable/disable to do fun things. Only do update-rc.d remove when the package is removed from the system.. Gotcha
4 second boot time for Chimera Linux, same as Void Linux
This also has xorg and xfce4 installed lol. Like the void linux fastfetch screenshot, it's also on a tty for the same reason.
So #chimeralinux. It's alright, installation guide and documentation is on point. Didn't have any problems setting it up. It's kinda like #Void but feels more like #Arch, in that you have to manually install the OS yourself instead of having a TUI like Void Linux installer has.
Playing with #dinit kinda works like #systemd. The only strange things about this #linux distro is that it uses /bin/sh instead of usual /bin/bash and it doesn't have #sudo or #doas in the repos.
Continued thread
Moving from #voidlinux to try out #chimeralinux now.