Distrobox Is Basically A Linux Subsystem For Linux

[@BrodieRobertson]

There are a lot of edge cases being mentioned in the comments, questions about whether you can or can't do X thing. I only scratched the surface with the configuration available if something seems mostly possible with Distrobox be sure to have a read of the documentation and see what can be done about it.

[@cirno4820]

I hear you like distros, so I put a distro in your distro!

[@PoeLemic]

Glad you are covering this, Brodie. Thank you. All of us could really, really, really benefit from this. A VM is too big footprint, so nice to containerize the apps. Brilliant concept.

[@drishalballaney]

Btw you can also take a look at bedrock linux which is EVEN more awesome than using just distrobox, you can easily mix and match stuff across distros

[@Keyshooter]

i run distrobox + podman, is a godsend, is extremely quickly, snappy, even on start up, and i use it as both, a way to install apps i don't have, and as a development environment (host is silverblue), is super handy

[@DavidStruveDesigns]

I can think of a use-case for an ephemeral box - say you or a friend is having problems getting some software to run, but they're not sure if it's an issue with the software itself or some unusal interaction with their distro. You do this run-once box with the software - if it doesn't run on _your_ distro it's an issue with the software, if it runs perfectly fine it's an issue with their distro. Or if you want to use a piece of software from another distro, but it _might_ cause issues with your own distro - you can trial run it once to see if any issues show up. If they do happen to show then you don't have to worry about it messing up your distro more permanently and it still being there upon reboot to cause the issue all over again - once you've run it, it'll self-delete and your distro is back to the way it was before your trial run. Or maybe you need to use a certain piece of software to complete a project, but it's not a program you really use at all - if you use an ephemeral box you can run it, complete your project and then it's gone from your system and saves you having to remember to manually remove it later. Also works if your system is rather low on resources, you can install and use various software on a need-to-use basis and not have to worry about it clogging up your system / hogging resources for long and again, you don't have to manually _do_ anything to get rid of it.

[@thingsiplay]

Could be useful for the Steam Deck (Steam OS has no write permission by default).

[@Nepoxification]

There are some videos out there that recommend using Distrobox to get all the different apps on your SteamDeck. I will play around with it a bit to see how reliable it works in Gaming Mode.

[@thingsiplay]

@@Nepoxification That would be awesome. Hopefully you will share this in Reddit so people can discuss your findings. 🙂 For me at the moment there is no specific use case where I need a program that is not available otherwise.

[@Ticktok_of_Oz]

Yup. It's great on the deck. They even have a script that installs podman in user space so you don't even need to unlock the filesystem for that and it persists between updates. I use it to setup development environments since I'm also using the deck as my laptop.

[@thingsiplay]

@@Ticktok_of_Oz Thank you for the reply from someone who have real world experience with this idea! I don't have any specific need for right now on my Deck (because I am just playing Steam games), but it is really good to know that it works as intended.

[@ryuichimiyazaki5620]

I wish I knew this sooner… I switched my deck os from steam os to holoiso just so I can download a few packages… smh

[@zenmaster24]

docker images cache locally - this is why the ubuntu 20.04 container was created so quickly the command `docker images -a` will show all the images you workstation has

[@BrodieRobertson]

I'm not surprised it caches images

[@danielruiz2864]

Why docker and no podman

[@blucky_yt]

@@danielruiz2864 distrobox supports podman too, and Brodie probably uses docker because that's what they're used to

[@GalaxyTracker]

This is EXACTLY what I needed! The only reason I've left Windows on my machine is because MatLab can't play along with Fedora. But it, supposedly has an Ubuntu native version. I will give it a try and see if I can run it through an Ubuntu box!

[@XanTheXanadul]

I had the same thought! Haven't gotten Matlab to work on my Arch system and hoped to get it to work in an Ubuntu distrobox. But I haven't had any luck with it so far...

[@whydoyouaskdude]

Why not use GNU Octave? Some special toolboxes needed? Maybe R has what Octave is lacking

[@sellicott]

@@whydoyouaskdude In my experience Octave is at least 2x slower than Matlab in almost all applications and is missing implementations for many functions.

[@dolbrechts1980]

it is not a vm but more a docker container i guess?

[@GalaxyTracker]

@@whydoyouaskdude Octave is great, I use it most of the time, but, in some rare occasions, MatLab code doesn't work because Octave lacks one or two formulas or the syntax may be slightly different. And it is not easy to debug the code when you are in class and need to finish the assignment. Or to restart the PC into Windows to open MatLab. I have to be in Windows (and MatLab) in the first place to not face problems. And I hate working in Windows...

[@brunoais]

Looks like a docker utility. A program that runs on top of docker to provide all these facilities... You know what.... I love it! It's a great program! What an awesome use of docker.

[@arimcbrown]

I was thinking the exact same thing 😂

[@victoralmanzar1273]

podman as well!

[@mateusz6007]

6:03 no, we want to run neofetch not gui applications...

[@nils.offermann]

It's essentially like toolbox from the podman devs, but it doesn't rely on custom images. Toolbox uses container images with certain stuff pre-installed to make this integration work seamlessly. Distrobox works with the default container images and then installs those things upon creation of a box. Apart from that they are basically the same thing.

[@maxarendorff6521]

So toolbox is faster to setup but distrobox can use any image?

[@nils.offermann]

@@maxarendorff6521 Pretty much. Toolbox can use any image as well but you'd have to manually set it up with a custom containerfile. I've done that for Debian, it's pretty straight forward. Some distros like openSUSE or Fedora have pre built Toolbox images. But yeah if you know that you need a lot of different distros then Distrobox is probably the better choice.

[@maxarendorff6521]

@@nils.offermann Noob question: Is there some command that lists all the compatible images for toolbox besides the default Fedora?

[@nils.offermann]

@@maxarendorff6521 Not that I know of. I think the best bet is just to search for distro + "toolbox image". For example "debian toolbox image" leads you right to an article by the endlessOS guys on how to create a toolbox image from the default debian container image.

[@RohithkannaDuraiswamy]

@@maxarendorff6521 There is a command for it, but I don't remember. Not using it nowadays

[@christiansilvermoon]

This is really awesome! Though sharing your Home Directory across different distros can cause issues. If you're on an Ubuntu-based host for example and run an Arch box, and then run something like say... Firefox, you will find yourself having problems. Firefox will refuse to start, citing that the configuration in `~/.mozilla` is incompatible. Most programs will happily read and update older configs, but will be clueless as to what to do with configs from newer versions. It may be very wise to run distrobox with a different $HOME variable.

[@jonathanalonso6492]

You can specify a dedicated home directory for each distro at creation time with the --home flag, forgoing the need to prepend each distrobox call with $HOME=/whatever/path

[@christiansilvermoon]

@@jonathanalonso6492 Ah, that's, wonderful! That is far more ideal ^^

[@jonathanalonso6492]

@@christiansilvermoon You can even do wacky stuff like having an arch container setup strictly for SteamVR using ALVR from the AUR, which is how I play my VR games on Linux with my Oculus Quest 2.

[@stormen81]

This look like a really cool application. opens up so many possibilities to test different package to be tested with out having to distro hop

[@developerpranav]

This might as well be my most liked video of yours this year :D Highly considering distrobox for my workflow.

[@maxarendorff6521]

This is great for development. Jorge Castro made a video about using distrobox for development on Fedora Silverblue. Great stuff.

[@ES-cf4ph]

Oh my god, this looks really cool! I always locked for ways to run Window Applications from Docker containers, but all solutions I found were pretty complicated. Will definitely try it out for special applcatrions I need.

[@grxgghxrpxr]

I absolutely love the sound of this. I can't wait for the Flatpak to be released as a stable version as I really love Solus, but there are a couple of packages (particularly megasync file manager integration) that I can't use on there and I think this means I can use it as my main distro.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

7:41 I would put “exec” in front of those command invocations. Just to save a process slot.

[@GeekIWG]

I heard you like Linux, so I put Linux in your Linux

[@bennihtm]

😂😂

[@MrMeek79]

Recently learned about this gem and man this is a game changer. I love it

[@andersschramm9946]

This is so fun and useful. Running Gentoo and used to have a chroot for Arch Linux Aur, but this is so much better. Also works on my Pi's for arm and arm64

[@LetrixAR]

LSL inside WSL inside KVM

[@bennihtm]

Noooooo

[@daephx]

9:38 I feel those prompts should default to false or [y/N] because they are destructive commands.

[@BrodieRobertson]

I agree, but I harp on about that too much

[@9a3eedi]

I've been looking for a tool like this for a long time. I run Manjaro and I needed an Ubuntu instance to use ROS, but i really didn't want to use a VM, and could not figure out containers. Before knowing about this tool, I used debootstrap to make a chroot. This actually worked pretty well. But distrobox seems like a much better solution

[@billeterk]

Will have a look at this one! I have a proprietary .deb I wanted to install but didn’t want to go through the hassle of trying to repackage for NixOS as it’s still pretty new to me :-)

[@noah5592]

Awesome use for distrobox!

[@ekeretteekpo3004]

My first time of checking out information on distrobox. Cool stuff. I may try it out. Thank you. I was going to ask about sandboxing just before you mentioned it. 😁 😅

[@notjustforhackers4252]

I've been playing around with this since gaming on Linux introduced me to it. Kudos to the developer, really nice bit of software. Good to see you cover it Brodie.

[@CMDRSweeper]

So it handles the handling of 3D devices nicely? Reason is, I have noticed some distros have better / different libraries of gstreamer for an example for wine than others, so it is beneficial without having to change everything to make something run better.

[@Tommy-the-coffee-addict]

This seems like it needs a little bit of set-up, but once you get it running, its super powerful.

[@genericgamer1319]

even easier if you don't use docker as far as i know podman can run rootless & requires no extra setup outside of installing it

[@2u263]

Thanks Brodie a month ago I came across the concept of linux ephemeral instances and I thought need more info. but couldn't satisfy my understand. Just happened onto Matts linux cast Talking about Distrobox, and I was what is Distrobox and you mentioned 'Linux Ephemeral Instances' and I looked at your transcript then searched ephemeral and finally I've found what peeked my interest months ago but could find more information on. So thanks to Brodie & Matt at last I found the anchor to my linux dream box🤣🤣

[@SigSeg-V]

This is pretty much how Linux support on ChromeOS works, pretty neat to see it work on Linux too

[@JahidulIslam]

Google uses lxd to install Linux in chrome OS.

[@genericgamer1319]

@@JahidulIslam as far as i know docker is built on top of lxc so is lxd but if none of those work for you you can just use the unshare command to build something custom

[@user-dc9zo7ek5j]

Distrobox, distrotube, disctrocube, distrocylinder, distrocone... you get the idea.

[@BiscuitBobby]

Distrohelix

[@lorddarthvader6289]

this is so useful for wine tricks on steam deck. most people don't seem to get that wine and proton still have differences and those make huge differences when wine tricks isn't available on steam deck

[@angryteapod1765]

well its accessible through lutris.

[@lorddarthvader6289]

@@angryteapod1765 you can't directly use it for your own needs. It's like a hack for non lutris stuff

[@schneensch]

Silverblue ready includes toolbox, which is the tool that inspired distrobox. It's very similar, but toolbox is a bit more bare-bones and only works with fedora in the container. Host can be whatever you want though. It might not seem as useful, but it can keep your host free of hundreds of packages that you can isolate into toolboxes.

[@dreamcat4]

it seems that one key advantage of distrobox is that you can run it on a host system with zfs root drives. which cannot do on bedrock. of course in addition to the other main advantage of being less invasive / harder to mess up your system. however the thing i am less certain of is how much extra overheads and resources usage for distrobox being based on docker when compared to bedrock specifically for a raspberry pi. since they can run out of resources much easily, and also especially if you want to boot from sdcard or emmc. then docker with its overlayfs can really mess things up not to mention all the disk space needed. wheras maybe bedrock is a lot leaner in those regards. i suppose the bigger question for rpi usage of distrobox is what docker server is best to choose. and how to configure the docker server. because its possible to choose either docker daemon, or podman, or nertctl (which is a newer replacement for docker daemon, a frontend for containerd). and that configuation aspect is perhaps less proven or well trodden answered for rpi usage. anyhow thanks for doing a video on this tool. it's very much a no brainer for both silverblue and the steam deck. and i would also be inclined to use it on any other desktop distros over bedrock. very good stuff appreciate it 👍

[@tiagotiagot]

Would this allow you to get a mutable version of the Steam Deck distro running inside the non-mutable system that comes with it by feeding it holoiso and/or the Deck recovery thingy?

[@NdxtremePro]

There are instructions on how to do that without Distrobox on gitlab somewhere, fyi.

[@nixfred]

At 7:37 what is that directory cruiser app shell thingy? Tanks.

Great review!

[@ME-dg5np]

Well done !🎉

[@androth1502]

did they just take fedora-toolbox and rename it to distrobox and allow it to be used on any distro? they forgot to rename some of the legacy toolbox branding. did they add anything else to toolbox? their example documentation seems a bit more useful than that found on the toolbox app.

[@jaimiepotts]

distrobox-ephemeral is probably inspired by a use case for containers in CI environments where you just want them to do one thing (e.g. run a test suite) and then have them deleted.

[@Beryesa.]

Bleeding edge Arch dev. env on top of a clean Fedora system is perfection for me 👌

[@chyldstudios]

very cool, i'm definitely going to try this out.

[@W1ldTangent]

Couldn't we already do this with LXD/LXC? Oh I see now, the difference is in the host-integration features (not impossible with LXD but you need to do it yourself). Ok ok now I see the full picture, so it's a frontend for Docker (which is a frontend for cgroups, just as LXC is).

[@jongeduard]

Maybe it is worth to point out WSL2 is basically just another container solution, besides also virtual machine. Because Windows runs a single Linux kernel using a Hyper V virtual machine underwater, but on top of that, you run one or more multiple instances next to each other, while they all use the exact same running kernel. A single kernel with multiple running systems is the whole idea of containerization. The more general name for this concept is actually operating system virtualization. This idea is older than Linux and is also known from BSD systems as jails.

[@replikvltyoutube3727]

basically its chroot or docker but more user friendly?

[@BrodieRobertson]

It manages docker or podman in the background but integrates it more tightly into the host

[@anon_y_mousse]

This sounds like we're a whole bunch of steps closer to what I want, which is to have a universal package manager. I would've said FlatPak, but it won't run at all for me, and AppImages will work everywhere but don't have proper management even with the launcher. They just need to update a bit and add Slackware 15.

[@vanodon2257]

Maybe checkout bubblewrap next. Very useful for keeping home directory clean, dandboxing also but my main use is cleaning my home dir.

[@itildude]

This is really cool. I've heard of it but didn't understand the integration that makes it...actually useful :-)

[@lightprogrammer]

This is mind-blowing

[@timidgoldfish]

Really cool project. I hope they implement proper sandboxing some time in the future.

[@Nepoxification]

I hope not. Because sandboxing it would take much more time and also take away performance i assume. It goes quickly and performant because it uses the hostsystems filesystem etc. etc. If you need a sandbox OS, boot up a VM. Much safer. I don't see why we would need sandboxes for this as it's goal is to provide that tightly integrated "subsystem". I would like for them to stick to their goals instead of spreading out and doing multiple things half-assed.

[@timidgoldfish]

@@Nepoxification You're making false claims without understanding the technology behind containerization. It's not going to take away from performance. It's just about not mounting certain fs bindings in podman or docker and make the home bindings more granular. Even if it's not as safe as a vm, it's still a useful feature to have for things that need a graphics card for example and you don't have access to gpu passthrough. And a lightweight sandbox is useful to many developers. Just because you don't use a feature doesn't mean it's not useful to a lot of people.

[@NdxtremePro]

My main use case is unsandboxed, in Steam OS on my Deck, so, please no.

[@maybeanonymous6846]

what if i install distrobox in distrobox

[@BrodieRobertson]

I'm honestly not sure what happens to a docker container inside of docker

[@dreamcat4]

@@BrodieRobertson well theres a googlable acronym for that... dind which simply stands for 'docker in docker'

[@akojic5486]

Nice. Thank you for great news

[@davidsmith7208]

This may be a silly/obvious question for some, but what application is being used starting 7:32? It seems like a useful app to have.

[@LaurenzNotHere]

lf

[@Mr.Finkel]

effen cool! thanks for the vid

[@elalemanpaisa]

i wish there were an option to restrict access to your home folder.. especially to those like .ssh

[@eugrus]

Is the rootfs of a box in an image like in lxc or in a dir like in proot?

[@eriklundstedt9469]

I recently used dbox to install a package (might have been from AUR) that was giving me issues with dependency versions on the host install of arch I also plan to use it to run awesomewm thru zephyr on my steamdeck as I can't stand KDE anymore

[@genericgamer1319]

how would you do that with a readonly root

[@gagnon124]

I get an error when trying to launch a gui application: Error: cannot open display: 0

[@Sevenhens]

It's fantastic for development. Stay on a stable distro like debian and make pet arch containers. Get all the benefits of Arch without the risk of Arch maintainers fucking up your bootloader.

[@nevinplove5097]

Nice! It's like Flatpak and Wine had a baby even though it would also be neat if there was a way to create something like app-images with this.

[@DaVince21]

I'm honestly stumped that someone thought of this AND that it could be implemented. I'm going to have fun with this. The way this is implemented actually reminds me a lot of Python virtualenv!

[@newplayer7743]

This is perfect to running arch apps from Gentoo, I don't need to launch Arch VM to run/update some apps again.

[@rvmiv_]

As someone with a Steamdeck I think I'm gonna use this on it to fill the void of all the things I haven't done so much sense I got it (My laptop still works and everything, I just don't use it as much for even PC centric things sense I got my Steam Deck)

[@bleack8701]

I could see myself trying to set up some simple distro with good support out of the box for gaming like popos and then just using distrobox to get whatever I need that I can't on popos.

[@storcke]

Very nice indeed.

[@PrateekTade]

If you choose to run Silverblue/Kinoite alongside Arch then Arch would be the distro running inside distrobox, not Silverblue/Kinoite right? Not saying that you can't run an immutable distro inside distrobox coz I'm not sure, but I guess it would probably defeat the purpose.

[@BrodieRobertson]

Either direction would work but yeah Arch in the box is probably more productive.

[@no_dugg]

I would lean toward setting up docker or podman to run in rootless mode, as the docker group will make the user root equivalent.

[@DiThi]

This seems like an easier and more automated way to do distro installations in chroots that I've done many times.

[@ViniciusProvenzano]

I do something like this with lxd. Not as easy and integrated out of the box, but it works. Distrobox seems really cool - not sure if I want to use docker.

[@MrjinZin0902]

if you need web server or you need specific compile version of S/W, the docker can be super useful. distrobox is just docker wrapper. nothing more. also docker can install SW to other partition. if you have small home directory then you can use docker to install sw in other partition. I have very small home partition. I have to use flapak and docker to install sw in other partition.

[@imhemish]

I suppose the GUI app would not directly work in wayland or would it?

[@leonidas14775]

How does this differ from chroot, or crouton for chromeos?

[@BiscuitBobby]

The bottles team made something similar called atoms with a user friendly GUI but containerised

[@darin7553]

Its still pretty buggy. I honestly don't understand why they didn't base it off of distrobox

[@BiscuitBobby]

@@darin7553 ah, didn't try it yet but ig I'll just use distrobox

[@uuu12343]

@@darin7553 Atom was made parallel from distrobox from what i remember, so they probably didn't know its existence Distrobox is based on Docker anyways, so if anything, atom probably could have built on top of docker

[@darin7553]

@@uuu12343 atoms uses proot, not docker

[@exoriy]

I've used LXC containers for similar purpose. Got running GTA:SA and SpaceCadet pinball from multiarch container with wine in pure 64 debian sid. Better security i think bcs i had to manually share downloads folder in config, no such integration with host as in distrobox. More hassle with sharing magic cookie and configuration for xsession

[@conceptrat]

So Docker with home user volume but truly open source?

[@uuu12343]

This is like Docker for Linux without the docker, and probably easier to use ...I love it

[@uuu12343]

I'm gonna use it in my Raspberry pi

[@uuu12343]

Ok, it's a wrapper for podman/Docker, that makes sense

[@wvovaw3052]

I like Your T-shirt so much!

[@ari-athbadminton0301]

Does that mean I can finally run Ani-cli in a debian or fedora based OS by having it in a arch box?

[@mtothem1337]

Looks interesting. But personally i prefer the isolation of containers. So i'd much rather use LXD i think. But i'm going to experiment for sure.

[@BiscuitBobby]

The bottles team made something similar called atoms with a user friendly GUI but containerised, u can find its flatpak

[@BiscuitBobby]

Never tried atoms tho so can't say much

[@BrodieRobertson]

This aims to provide a seemless user experience between host and container but if that's not for you there's plenty of other ways to approch this.

[@AaronMorrisTheSteamFox]

I can't get exported desktop files to work on any distro.

[@noxiousophidian9634]

How to get that file explorer view in terminal?

[@jonathandawson3091]

Exactly where does it put installed files?

[@benjy288]

This seems like it would install a whole lot of dependencies on your system, whether they're in your /root directory or your /home dirrectory

[@SpaceToastC2C]

Would this help with thr glibc issue with easy anticheat on Arch? Great vid man btw

[@DMSBrian24]

Kinda sounds like a docker image with easy integration

[@BrodieRobertson]

That's exactly what it is, it's running docker or podman in the background.

[@DMSBrian24]

@@BrodieRobertson yeah wrote it before i finished watching haha

[@Robotta]

Does anybody know which font is the one Brodie uses for the terminal in the video? Looks really clean and readable.

[@BrodieRobertson]

Jetbrains Mono Medium

[@Robotta]

@@BrodieRobertson thank you man. Great video as always.

[@gsilva877]

Very cool project. Currently I don't see a use case for me that wort the trial because plain old docker is enough. But good to know this tool exists.

[@FengLengshun]

Me figuring out distrobox is the catalyst for moving away from Arch. The past two months have been a mess, and I realize that I don't want Arch as much as I just want AUR. With the combination of bauh, deb-get, pacstall, and now distrobox? I don't need direct access to AUR, I got what I want through a mix of those options (with only a few exceptions, like nwjs that still needs manual install). I'm currently using it on Kubuntu Focus and quite happy to not be so afraid of updates anymore.

[@skywz]

How does distrobox compare to bedrock?

[@BrodieRobertson]

It's a very different approach, distrobox is literally running a containerized version of the distro that integrates into the host so one benefit you get is there's chance for the container tooling to override the host tooling and break your package manager.

[@fu886]

What the value it has over running the distro in podman/docker+x11?

[@fu886]

Oh actually cool it obfuscate the messy integration

[@wumwum42]

My next laptop wil use fedora while I am used to arch/manjaro, so this likely becomes very useful at some point.

[@OcteractSG]

I do have to wonder about playing Steam games through DistroBox. I have a game that needs a newer version of glibc than what my district ships, at least if I want to run it natively.

[@zvanmilisavljevic8879]

LSL - Linux subsystem for linux

[@NdxtremePro]

Doesn't it not work because the script is passing the -n argument without a name? You give the name in the terminal command, but it is missing in the script file.

[@adrianinsaval]

This is very cool

[@hannescampidell]

I can do something dangerus in the box if i install distrobox in Qemu

[@milohoffman274]

This is sorta like the Linux version of WSL. Linux Services for Linux.

[@owlmostdead9492]

This is actually amazing for apps where flatpak has too much overhead

[@PokettoMusic]

based, liked, favorited and I will be installing the distrobox

[@jotherman8113]

This is fucking awesome thanks bro

[@xzaratulx]

Arch with Arch boxes .. Arch inception 😁 Make a box for every weird AUR program you dont wanna recompile every time a system update kills it. And I dont need gpu drivers and kde/gnome shared parts like with flatpak. It's in a box but still uses my local gui theme.

[@AmirHosseinHonardust]

Brodie are you avoiding nixos?:)) This is the second time I have heard you talk about immutable distros and avoid the most famous one.

[@BrodieRobertson]

One day I'll cover it

[@thefearlessgeek]

Use the --home flag to use a different directory as a home directory.