Serpent Linux will not be dependent on a GNU toolchain or runtime
Solus Linux creator, Ikey Doherty announced that it is building “A Truly Modern Linux Distribution” Serpent OS and that the distribution will not rely on the GNU toolchain and runtime. Ikey Doherty believes that most Linux distributions on the market today have very similar goals:
Modern, lightweight, privacy oriented/respecting, user-friendly desktop
This Linux distro focuses on building a Linux distribution that meets its needs, rather than focusing on “Linux-based-OS” that interoperate with macOS * + Windows *. 
In a nut shell, this is not “Linux for the masses”. This is a project setting out to use Linux as Linux should be used. This will in turn help us to build a significantly advanced Linux distribution that is both modular and optimised for modern machines.“
In a nut shell, this is not “Linux for the masses”. This is a project setting out to use Linux as Linux should be used. This will in turn help us to build a significantly advanced Linux distribution that is both modular and optimised for modern machines.“
More specifically, Serpent will be “A Truly Modern Linux Distribution”, which will adopt a distribution-first design decision with higher compatibility. It will also incorporate more sensible design improvements from the past decade or so into the design of Linux distributions:
- No more usrbin split
- 100% clang-built throughout (including kernel)
- musl as libc, relying on compiler optimisations instead of inline asm
libc++instead oflibstdc++- LLVM’s binutils variants (
lld,as, etc.)- Mixed source/binary distribution
- Moving away from
x86_64-genericbaseline to newer CPUs, including Intel and AMD specific optimisations- Capability based subscriptions in package manager (Hardware/ user choice / etc)
UEFIonly. No more legacy boot.- Completely open source, down to the bootstrap / rebuild scripts
- Seriously optimised for serious workloads.
- Third party applications reliant on containers only. No compat-hacks
- Wayland-only. X11 compatibility via containers will be investigated
- Fully stateless with management tools and upstreaming of patches
- Lots, lots more. We’ll blog about it.
The development of the Serpent OS project will begin at the end of July, and there is currently no fixed release time for the final stable version.
