Chimera Linux is a novel Linux distribution built around FreeBSD core tools and the LLVM toolchain. Since its initial launch in 2021, it has made a lot of progress and is now in alpha stage. The system can be deployed on a wide array of hardware and many people are using it as their desktop system; it works on x86_64, AArch64, POWER (little and big endian) as well as RISC-V and by now comes with thousands of packages.

While trying to be practical, Chimera is also highly hardened, partly thanks to the LLVM toolchain, rendering it immune to various security issues other distros are vulnerable to. It has transparent and robust infrastructure, ensuring smooth deployment of packages. We are also developing various new tooling that the whole ecosystem can benefit from, including the Turnstile session tracker. Service management is based around Dinit, a modern, supervising system; we maintain and create a variety of tooling around it, trying to break the existing status quo with systemd, while abandoning legacy approaches.

2023 has seen several major milestones, so I will focus on these, while also giving a short overview so that people unfamiliar with the system don't feel lost. I will also explain how our work benefits the entire Linux ecosystem, as well as beyond.