I’m doing a bunch of AI stuff that needs compiling to try various unrelated apps. I’m making a mess of config files and extras. I’ve been using distrobox and conda. How could I do this better? Chroot? Different user logins for extra home directories? Groups? Most of the packages need access to CUDA and localhost. I would like to keep them out of my main home directory.
I’ve never worried about this but I’d use Flatpak. The whole install goes in a specific directory and the metadata/config/data files go in their own specific directory.
Those Flatpak configs are not quite as scattered, most are in .config .var or .local. Most Flatpaks leave junk behind in these directories. I just deleted a few today. A lot of the problems start happening when you need to compile stuff where each package has the same dependency but a different version of the dep in each one. Then you have a problem and need to track down some related library that is not in the execution path and suddenly there are 10 copies of a dozen files all related to the stupid thing on your system and scattered all over the place. It becomes nearly impossible to track down which file is related to the container with the problem.
This is only an issue if you find yourself playing in software that is not yet supported directly my any packagers for Linux distros; stuff like FOSS AI right now.