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.