this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 21 hours ago

I use Chimera Linux which is musl based. Compatibility is great. If you have the source, you are probably fine.

It can be a pain for projects that ship binaries as part of the build. Two examples that I have run into:

  • The Ladybird browser uses vpkg and the version their scripts download assumes Glibc. You can build vpkg itself on musl but the whole process is a pain.
  • dotnet requires a binary build of dotnet to bootstrap from. There are musl builds available but they assume GCC and Chimera uses Clang. Not really a musl problem now that I think of it.

Anyway, I use a Distrobox of Arch on Chimera. If I do run into something (like the two above), I just pop into that and problem solved.

Flatpak is essentially the same solution as they run in a container and the freedesktop base is Glibc based.

Not only is musl not generally a problem but, these days, it is trivial to work around it.