TL;DR: It’s basically a WSL for Linux. Linux subsystem for Linux if you will.
It let’s you install and use pretty much any software ever written for Linux, including AUR packages and graphical apps, on any distro you want. You should all give it a try!
Distrobox is probably the best thing ever.
If bread existed in the Linux world, Distrobox would be the equivalent, or better than sliced bread.
It just solves many of the problems that plagued us in the past!
I’m just sick of answering so many comments or posts where people either
- almost dislocate their joints in trying to get some software working on their distro, where it isn’t officially supported;
- or choose/ leave a particular distro based on the amount of available packages, e.g. Arch.
**The answer is simple: use fucking containers. **
Before I turned into a weird “immutable distro”-user, I slapped every random install onto my host OS.
After all this shit building up over years, and cluttering my system, it turned against me.
Repos not being available, packages conflicting, weird icons popping up, and more. It was a mess!
If one did that on a server, he would probably get slapped by the Selfhosted-community.
If there’s Docker, Podman and more, especially for servers, why don’t we use it for desktop too?
Some guy probably thought the same and made Distrobox.
You can just download BoxBuddy as Flatpak and/ or install it via package manager.
BoxBuddy is a graphical frontend, that helps you manage and use your containers. It’s pretty new tho and is still in heavy development.
Traditionally, Distrobox is CLI-only, but I can see that changing in the near future.
“Why not just use a VM?”
Those containers aren’t isolated and barely draw additional resources. Actually, they’re somewhat comparable to Flatpaks.
They provide themselves with their stuff they need, but aren’t virtualized. The main difference between Flatpaks and DB-containers for myself is that Flatpaks have permissions.
They can and will interact with your host. For example, if I plug in my phone, I can access it via ADB in my Arch container. Or my Nextcloud-client can open my browser and auto start on boot.
Who needs that?
Everyone. Well, maybe. Depends.
Image distros
Certainly users of image based (“immutable”) distros like Fedora Silverblue and other variants of this family, like uBlue (Bazzite, etc.).
While we actually could install every package from the Fedora repo traditionally on our host, this should be avoided.
Steam Deck users would benefit strongly too, since they can only use Flatpaks atm.
People who can’t get some packages with their distro
One of the main arguments, why so many users go or stay on Arch, is the AUR.
Often, they have a love-hate-relationship with it. It might break easily if you do something wrong, which is easily done for many users. At the same time, it gives them their niche software they need.
What if I told you, that you can enjoy this huge plus point for Arch on every other distro too, while benefiting from the comfort of your favourite distro?
You can even install an Ubuntu container and use Snaps there if you enjoy using them.
Developers
On the stock Fedora Silverblue, there’s Toolbx pre-installed, which does something very similar, but not as good. It’s a RedHead product.
On uBlue on the other hand, Distrobox is the default, which is better.
Toolbx’ main use case is programming. For devs working with different Python-versions for example and don’t wanna risk breaking their OS.
DB does the same, but more.
But why is it so powerful?
You can also export your software to your host.
E.g., the Flatpak version of Nextcloud didn’t work well for me. The Arch package on the other hand is less buggy and looks properly.
It’s perfectly integrated in my system and I don’t notice it at all that it hasn’t been installed natively.
This even extends to DEs and TWMs!
You could, for example, create an Arch container only for Hyprland, which you basically can’t install on other distros.
And then, you can use said example, or the beta-version of the new Plasma, on OpenSuse Leap.
On uBlue at least, all my containers update themselves too.
Another great thing is the modularity.
You can, for example, just delete the Arch container if it breaks randomly or due to user error, without worrying about losing access to your PC or having to troubleshoot for hours.
All in all, just try it. Trust me.
I have seen many people on Lemmy mentioning Distrobox, who are you referring to?..
Also, yeah, it sounds neat. Thanks for the good post
I’m not refering to any comment in particular, it’s just that it happens all the time that someone doesn’t know about that possibility.
I’m reading all the time stuff like “If you need this package, then the only option for you is Arch” or “I’m on Arch and can’t install this Fedora package, I have to compile it myself”, and so on.Yeah, there are people mentioning it, but still, many many others have never heard about it, and I find that a bit sad.
I did an experiment where I used Distrobox for many apps not available on Debian. I installed an Arch distrobox and exported the packages. I found that it works great with simple programs, but I run into a few issues when using more complex programs. Jellyfin Media Player for example tended to have a memory leak and have a core dump on the desktop whenever it is closed. It uses twice as memory as the Flatpak for some reason. I had the same issue with Stremio which is also a video streaming app. For command line things it’s mostly fine. But this too can get tricky. I tried to use Neovim (Debian’s is a bit old) in the Arch distorbox. The issue is that if you need plugins that require some dependency with a given version then you have to also install those and export them which makes things messy. For example you may have a version of Nodejs on your Debian install but you’ll need to install Nodejs on the distorbox too and export it. It’s the same with many packages like that. You’ll run into some issues and waste time trying to figure out where is it coming from. Is it your machine or the distorbox? I ended up just building from source. Overall it’s a great project and might work for some software that you need. But it’s not something you can always rely on for everything. The app devs are not testing for that specific use case. It’s so great for testing and installing stuff and then destroying when you don’t need it anymore.
My take is that on an Arch system I can install anything and I have btrfs snapshots to roll back forkups. I don’t need this added layer of complexity in its current form. If it offered proper and easily configurable sandboxing I would certainly think about it.
(Then again I have a Deb laptop and perhaps I will try this out for Pyradio)
I think one main plus point is that it keeps your system less cluttered.
Even on a “traditional” distro (mutable, like Mint, Arch, etc.) I would try to install all my stuff as Flatpak or Distrobox container. Call me compulsive, but I like my stuff to be organized. In my apartment, I also use drawers and boxes, so why not digitally? Installing everything to the host is like cluttering my flat with spoons in my bed and the toothbrush in the kitchen. Sure, it’s not as easy as throwing everything on the floor, but at least I can find it again and it is less of a hassle to maintain it.
You should check out Nix the package manager, which is an even better option than Distrobox if you want to install stuff independently of your distro’s packaging system. The biggest advantage of using Nix is that there’s no container layer, so you’re running the binaries directly on your host OS - this means that the binary can have full access to system resources, which is handy if you need to run one of those apps with root privileges (try running a Distrobox exported app with
sudo- it won’t work). Or say you want to install something like a terminal emulator - it’s not exactly practical to install it inside Distrobox, because now every time you run the terminal, you’d be viewing at your system from inside the container, which can makes things pretty messy.Another advantage of Nix is that because you’re dealing with actual binaries and not just a shim script, it can handle command line arguments properly and also handle things like stdin/stdout properly. In fact there’s a bug right now with the way Distrobox export handles command line parameters, where it eats some of the parameters so your exported program may not work correctly. I had this issue with a Distrobox export of freerdp and raised an issue for it, but it still hasn’t been fixed. So until this is fixed, I’d advise staying away from running distrobox exported stuff, unless you’re using it for only simple apps/workflows.
Also, you don’t have the hassle of having to maintain/update the Arch or whatever OS is installed inside your containers.
Finally, with Nix you can easily roll back your transactions or switch between multiple versions of the apps - all of which takes place instantly, because all it’s doing is switching the symlinks in the Nix store.
lots of softwares are missing in nix. distrobox with AUR is the best and safest option
Any examples of what’s missing exactly?
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yeah, that is why distrobox is lot of more flexible than nixos and hell even SteamOS support distrobox natively as well.
I just use distrobox on NixOS.
Why not switch to NixOS and run Duplicacy in an Arch Distrobox on top?
With Nix you have to do everything the Nix way. If a package doesn’t work correctly or is missing you either have to dive deep into the Nix rabbit hole or wait till someone who knows stuff fixes your problem. With nix everything is all or nothing (even more so with NixOS).
Distrobox is the opposite, it embraces variety and gives you as many options/distro environments as it can. Once the missing container bugs are fixed you are dependent on no one to get your packages working.
Also, Nix is usually not the normal way devs package their software, so there always have to be people repackaging the stuff with nix (and updating when the source package changes).
Distrobox gives you access to the environment where the stuff is packaged already, a lot less work is needed to get working packages which should not be underestimated.
The more packages you install with nix the higher the probability you encounter packages no nix expert has cared for recently
The whole point of Distrobox is the you want access to the package manager ( well, the packages ) of a different distribution.
Yes, but if that’s all you’re after then it’s overkill, because Nix (probably) has all the packages you’d want. Unless that distro you’re after has a special/unique package that’s not found anywhere else or something.
According to Repology, Nix has around 90,000 packages, compared to AUR’s 75k. Of course those numbers aren’t exactly comparable given the loose definition of a “package”, but it should be a rough indicator that surely you can get almost anything you want from Nix, without running into the limitations and complexities of Distrobox.
Unrelated but also kind of related: check out bedrock Linux. It’s a trip.
It lets you ‘hijack’ a Linux install and then you can use package managers and packages from other distros. It’s magical how well it works.
Which is what distrobox does?
Not at all what Distrobox does, Bedrock Linux has a similar idea but executed in a very different way.
That TL;DR is useless…
Edit: it’s now much more useful, thank you
Thanks for the critique, it’s now edited.
This still doesn’t solve the issue with underlying kernel feature and function compatibility. 99% of the time when I have an issue getting something to work, it’s because of something like my LTS kernel doesn’t support floc(), etc.
This only solves competence issues, it does nothing to resolve the difficult compatibility problems.
- even if I’d go back to arch (or endeavouros) I’d install packages via distrobox. Just because I don’t want to mess with my base install anymore. If it is not important for the system, I don’t install it there.
- atomic distro (the word immutable is outdated because it’s ambiguous)
- on fedora silverblue you have to install distrobox manually because fedora wants to stick to their version of it (toolbox) although toolbox is not as feature rich for desktop usage than distrobox. Opensuse on the other hand uses distrobox (they also use the flatpak version of firefox)
- you don’t need to distrohop anymore because of the package manager. You can use any prefered system and put a distrobox on top of it. This is amazing.
- what’s the best image for distrobox? https://lemmy.ml/post/10368483 I’d say use whatever you want. If you’re on fedora, use fedora until you need a specific package that’s not available in their repo. If you are on opensuse, go for that, just for simplicity.
- although I use distrobox and advocate for it. I am reading about the nix package manager. I’m not yet interested in nixos (maybe when snowflakeos is ready for prime time) but the pacmage manager is worth looking into. How does it compare to distrobox? What’s “better” for general packages?
I mentioned most all of your points already in my post, but still, thanks!
what’s the best image for distrobox?
I’d say Arch (btw). I was never a fan of it and couldn’t imagine installing it as desktop distro, but as container, it couldn’t be better imo. It’s minimal and customizable. I use zsh with many plugins, including the Arch one. I didn’t like pacman’s syntax, and with the plugin, it’s easier (´pacin package´ instead of ´sudo pacman -Ss package´). Pacman is super fast too, and installing stuff takes just seconds.
It’s very up to date and most packages have worked pretty reliably actually!
I am reading about the nix package manager
I thought about it a while ago too, but I find it to be too complicated, outdated and just not relevant for me. For others, it might be wonderful, but I just didn’t have reasons to use it.
It’s very useful! I use it to avoid clutter like Tesseract and LaTeX dependencies; using software that it’s not available for my distro (openSUSE Tumbleweed) nor Flatpak and sometimes to try software that I haven’t used before to test, as in checking its config directories, performance, UI, etc. and install/uninstall quickly to avoid dependency problems.
Note: remember to check your PATH while creating your new distrobox, since distroboxes will try to run your
.bashrcor similar and you will get errors or results you may not want to.How long have you been using distrobox and which were the biggest painpoints yet?
Why has nobody ever heard of Distrobox?
Because there’s Flatpak.
Flatpak is only for graphical programs
And the only distros that actually matter are Debian and Red Hat Enterprise, so wtv.
Any recommendations for a rolling-release immutable distro? Or does that not matter?
I haven’t distrohopped in a while and I just might after hearing about Fedora Sericea (Immutable Fedora with swaywm). I just need to understand this whole immutable thing more, because I kind of get the idea but I don’t understand basic things like how to install packages, for example.
Also, any way to install packages in an environment and not have it create config files in your home directory, but instead in a temporary directory? Like when you wanna test software but have to clean stuff up later, it’s annoying
I can make a post similar to this one here about image based distros if you want.
I think Fedora Atomic (Silverblue, Kinoite, Sericea, etc.) are the best choice atm.
It’s the oldest and most sophisticated one and gives you the most choice.
Take a look into universal-blue.org if you like ease of use, want more DEs/ WMs than the few official ones, or have special hardware (Nvidia, etc.).NixOS isn’t immutable/ image based per definition, but even if it would, I personally would only recommend it to highly skilled people who have the time to work themselves into it. It has its benefits, but sounds like a lot of work and is very complicated due to lack of documentation.
OpenSuse Aeon is pretty new and doesn’t have a big dev team behind it, and therefore I wouldn’t trust it enough yet.
VanillaOS sounds also very promising, but is very immature atm and also has a small dev team.
It will be Debian-based very soon and wants to be a future-oriented Linux Mint alternative. Same philosophy (ease of use, stability, etc.), but different approach.
Sadly you are stuck to Gnome and can’t rebase to something else, which is a no-go for a DE-hopper like myself.
But I am very interested in its future and will try it some time.
About installing software:
- Choice #1 is Flatpak. It’s simple, usually just works and is for everything graphical. It covers 99,9% of everything you want and need.
- Choice #2: Distrobox and Nix, especially for CLI stuff. It’s a bit more complicated than just hitting the install-button in the software center, but if you need that stuff, you are already used to work in the console anyway.
- Choice #3: Direct install. I use Fedora Atomic as example here. You can still use your package manager (similar to dnf) and layer the packages. In practical use, it is the same as installing it traditionally, like with apt or dnf, but under the hood, you can imagine it like Gnome shell extensions. They can add, change or mask features the UI, but it’s still Gnome and one toggle away. OSTree-layered packages are still separated from the base, but work exactly as if they would be installed on bare metal.
So you never loose any functionality, only some things are a tiny bit more complicated and different. Once you got it, you don’t see it as impractical, but genius.
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people get grumpy about containers vs nix vs flatpak and I just wanna say… I’m glad you’re using Linux. yes, you.
@pl_woah @Guenther_Amanita I regard these all these things as nerd toys for exploring innovation …
So a question re distrobox. Can it be used to run additional isolated sessions, say via Xephyr or something, that share host resources without abstraction?
Basically, I want to host two additional KDE sessions in Zephyr (or something) and then run Steam and sunshine in, and point my kids respective clients to them.
Or with PCI pass thru, but I’m trying to avoid that.
Can Distrobox help me accomplish this in any way?
