Distrobox 1.4 Released - Easier Container Upgrades, Local Podman Install For Steam Deck

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Distrobox 1.4 Released - Easier Container Upgrades, Local Podman Install For Steam Deck

Distrobox is the open-source software that quickly and easily fires up Linux distributions in containers for helping to augment the package selection from your host distribution, easily experiment with different distributions, and other use-cases. Distrobox 1.4 is out this week with the latest enhancements for this project...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Distrobox-1.4-Released

[patrick1946]

I am using toolbox. Seems distrobox has more features. Has anybody any experience with both? I use toolbox mostly as development environment on Silverblue but the update feature looks nice.

[Jabberwocky]

Looks like a tool that I can benefit from. I'm going to have to wait before I can use it for productivity improvements.

<rant>
Unfortunately podman is a mess on Ubuntu 20.22 and I'm too stubborn to run docker on the same system that I use for work.

Suse provides better support for ubuntu-podman than Ubuntu: https://download.opensuse.org/reposi...iners:/stable/

Honestly it was easier getting it to work on Windows (sad panda).
</rant>

Fedora's os-tree is epic. I hope other distros will implement the same functionality.

PS: I did not dare to install toolbox via snap... **** knows what that proprietary PoS will do to my system...

Yes, toolbox is proprietary on the snapstore. https://snapcraft.io/toolbox while it has an Apache-2.0 license on github: https://github.com/containers/toolbox

[risho]

I am using toolbox. Seems distrobox has more features. Has anybody any experience with both? I use toolbox mostly as development environment on Silverblue but the update feature looks nice.

I've used both on Silverblue. I would say that if all you want to use as a guest OS is Fedora and you don't care about it polluting your real home directory then toolbox has better native integration and better support for things like tab-autocomplete and stuff. If you want to have access to pretty much any guest you could imagine (arch, ubuntu, debian, fedora, nix, etc) and to be able to easily set separate home directories for different environments then distrobox is a godsend. I personally very much prefer distrobox.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

I am using toolbox. Seems distrobox has more features. Has anybody any experience with both? I use toolbox mostly as development environment on Silverblue but the update feature looks nice.

Yes, Distrobox > Toolbox.

The Distrobox dev is very responsive to feature requests, and it has some key capabilities that Toolbox doesn't and likely won't ever have.

• The ability to easily set a different path for your home directory instead of bind mounting your real one. Who always wants everything you install in a container shitting all over your actual home directory?
• The ability to export desktop launchers, services, etc. from the guest so they can be more easily run from the host.

Both of these things have been brought up numerous times from Toolbox users as really important, and the dev sticks his head in the sand and gives stupid answers like "use flatpak" (like every GUI app on the planet is available as a flatpak).

[JEBjames]

Michael

Typo "all containers ato nce" should be "all containers at once"

[Vorpal]

Seems like a nice piece of software if you are on a distro that is lacking in some way (atomic updates with steam os, old lts distro, ...).

I don't personally see a use for it as I run Arch (up to date and good coverage via AUR). Maybe if I end up needing to run ROS stuff again in the future for research, it would be nice to have distrobox with Ubuntu in it? Assuming it works with accelerated nvidia stuff (both graphics and cuda). And you can bind it to the real IP (no nat or port forwarding).

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Seems like a nice piece of software if you are on a distro that is lacking in some way (atomic updates with steam os, old lts distro, ...).

I don't personally see a use for it as I run Arch (up to date and good coverage via AUR). Maybe if I end up needing to run ROS stuff again in the future for research, it would be nice to have distrobox with Ubuntu in it? Assuming it works with accelerated nvidia stuff (both graphics and cuda). And you can bind it to the real IP (no nat or port forwarding).

The "use packages from another distro" is certainly an interesting use case, but that's not my primary interest in it. Even on Arch, I'd use it to just play with random stuff I was interested in from the Arch repos or AUR. You can easily blow it all away without worrying about gunking up your system. For the stuff you really like, you could add it to your main install. Nvidia stuff should work fine. I have a steam distrobox container + Nvidia GPU. Basically, you can get a lot of the benefits of a clean system that immutable systems force by using containers on a regular distro.

Or maybe you want to create a container for work apps that you want to keep separate.

Or maybe you want to run a Fedora Rawhide KDE desktop on a stable RHEL clone?

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/posts/run_latest_gnome_kde_on_distrobox.md

You can do all kinds of weird stuff with it safely.

[jacob]

I am using toolbox. Seems distrobox has more features. Has anybody any experience with both? I use toolbox mostly as development environment on Silverblue but the update feature looks nice.

I use both. Distrobox's advantage is that it can trivially run different distros, even with systemd as pid1 within the container (something that either doesn't work at all within toolbox or is a huge PITA as far as I can tell)

[emblemparade]

I love this project so much! I use it every day and just fine every aspect of it so satisfying. I feel it really liberates Linux and makes differences between Linuxes far, far less consequential.