this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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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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The Quest for Reasonably Secure Operating Systems (yazomietech.bearblog.dev)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by yazomie@lemmings.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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TL;DR - About switching from Linux Mint to Qubes OS from among various other options that try to provide security out-of-the-box (also discussed: OpenBSD, SculptOS, Ghaf, GrapheneOS)

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[–] Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The GNU utils vs BSD utils issue should be easy to work around with a bit of symlinking and PATH modification:

> type find
find is /bin/find

> type gfind
gfind is /usr/local/bin/gfind

> sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/opt/gnuutils/bin/
> sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/gfind /usr/local/opt/gnuutils/bin/find

> PATH="/usr/local/opt/gnuutils/bin:$PATH" type find
find is /usr/local/opt/gnuutils/bin/find

or in script form:

#!/bin/sh
# install as /usr/local/bin/gnu-run
# invoke as gnu-run some-gnu-specific-script script-args
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/gnuutils/bin:$PATH"
exec "$@"

/usr/local/opt/... is probably not the best place to put this but you get the idea, you can make it work with POSIX tools. I don't know that much about Chimera Linux but I'd be very surprised if nobody has thought of doing this systematically, e.g. as part of a distributable package.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago

Thank you for the suggestion. I am ashamed to confess that a temporary PATH variable had not occurred to me.

I first ran into these issues creating package templates. Chimera has a beautiful package build system where packages get built in containers and source code gets downloaded into the container and and built against a clean environment. As you point out, creating a package that creates the symlinks as a dependency (along with the GNU utils) could be a viable approach here. Maybe even just in /usr/local. The GNU utils get installed to /usr/bin in Chimera and the container gets recycled for every new package. The distro would never accept such hacky packages but I can use them myself.

For just generally working in the distro at the command-line, your temporary path idea could work well.

Thanks again. I appreciate it!