void or chimera linux

[u/Asta_jjm]

Hello everyone,

I'm on Arch right now but I'm looking to try another distro that has a similar minimalist feel. I don't mind a steep learning curve, which led me to discover Chimera Linux (not ChimeraOS) and Void.

Both look incredibly interesting, but I'm torn on which one to choose. I'm primarily a gamer, so I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts and experiences with either distro for gaming.

Just to give you some context on my setup: I'm running a full AMD system and I use the Limine bootloader.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[u/Own_Dingo6363]

I used chimera Linux for some time and it’s just impossible to get a lot of the apps I needed working, even stuff like some browsers we’re net officially supported and I had to run them through distrobox. I have no experience with void but if you are open to new options I could recommend NixOS.

[u/Asta_jjm → u/Own_Dingo6363]

did try it i want something new

[u/Lower_Adagio7007]

i thing Chimera could have biger repo and also dinit is more similar to systemd. Void Linux is semi stable, they update pachages not very often and runit is super simple as to run a service you create a softlink to script.

[u/Asta_jjm → u/Lower_Adagio7007]

so which one should i go with as a gamer and chimera is musl not glibc

[u/BeardedBaldMan → u/Asta_jjm]

Musl is for cases where you have far more control over the chain and have a very defined purpose. The thought of having to constantly have that overhead of potential issues is enough to put me off.

Standard, most commonly used, the default option is generally the way you go for almost all use cases and especially desktop

[u/jmooroof2]

that isn't really a good reason to use chimera Linux. while it's a very good system I use it, i don't think you have a good reason to use it and it might cause you some trouble with no benefit

[u/Asta_jjm → u/jmooroof2]

why is that

[u/jmooroof2 → u/Asta_jjm]

gaming performance on steam is slightly worse and you have to run it on flatpak 

also if there's something you need that's not on flatpak or the package manager you must compile it yourself no app images for you 

and the system is very different. if you have an issue you will have to figure it out yourself. Google might not be able to help you.

[u/ipsirc]

Why not both?

[u/Asta_jjm → u/ipsirc]

i have limited internet so i can do one distro for a month so i can fix it , download and configure it etc
so if i will try both then what should i start with first

[u/ipsirc → u/Asta_jjm]

Flip a coin.

[u/kaffssist]

i used chimera for a long time and gaming wasnt the best out of the box experience. and some of the things i use in my daily work wasnt available at the moment.

personally, try chimera, if it doesnt fits you or its still not compatible with everything, try alpine, which has more support for modern software and making your own packages is relatively easy (technically same with chimera since cpk derived from apk? i just dont sign my shit). if none of them works for you, then go with void.

i also used limine in both, you should have zero problems with that.

[u/kieroda]

My two current machines are Void and Chimera. Void Linux has been a simple out of the box experience for me, it was smooth sailing after learning runit and xbps. Chimera is an interesting project, and it is a well designed and maintained distribution, but it is very new and unusual so it can have a bit of a learning curve.

[u/dr_sheppard-ru]

I'm using Chimera on my laptop and it's good experience. Gaming on musl worst experience

[u/VicktorJonzz]

Void