Distrobox allows you to run commands or applications without fear of damaging your system
The new release of Distrobox 1.4 was released, which allow manage containers on your system, with which you can share USB removable devices, the user's HOME folder or partition, audio, as well as sockets from the X11 and Wayland desktop environments.
For those who are still unaware of this tool, they should know that allows you to quickly install and run any Linux distribution in a container and ensure its integration with the main system.
The project provides a plugin on top of Docker or Podman, and it is distinguished by the maximum simplification of the work and the integration of the execution environment with the rest of the system. To create an environment with a different distribution, it is enough to execute a single distrobox-create command, without thinking about the subtleties.
distro box claims to be able to host 17 distributions, including Alpine, Manjaro, Gentoo, EndlessOS, NixOS, Void, Arch, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, and Fedora. Any distribution kit for which images exist in OCI format can be launched in the container. After installation, the user can fully work on another distribution without leaving the main system.
Distrobox 1.4 main news
In this new version it is highlighted that added “distrobox upgrade” command to update the content of all containers installed with distributions at once, as well as that the command was added "distrobox generate-entry" to add a distrobox-based environment to the list of applications.
Another change that stands out is that the command "distrobox ephemeral" to create a disposable container which will be deleted after the session associated with it ends.
Moreover, we can find a new script called “install-podman” this allows the user to be able to install Podman in the home directory without affecting the system environment (useful for environments where system directories are mounted read-only or uneditable).
In addition to this, it also highlights the improved support for host systems with Guix and Nix package managers, as well as improved support for LDAP, Active Directory, and Kerberos authentication.
It is also mentioned that work has been done to improve mismatch error messages, as well as synchronizing host files only if they exist, and systemd integration for rootful containers has been improved.
Of the other changes highlights of this new release:
- Avoid xbps errors by keeping it up to date
- Fixed mount point for home on ostree based OS. This will fix problems with the package installation on Fedora.
- tzdata handling fix
- Added missing help entry for the --next/-N flag
- list/host-exec: fix tty detection
- smooth: Add flag without color to the list
- list: disable colors when you are not in a terminal.
- Removed deprecated route function
Finally, if you are interested in learning more about the project or the complete list of changes, you can do so from the following link.
How to install DistroBox on Linux?
For those who are interested in being able to install this tool, You should know that it is available in many of the main Linux distribution repositories.
But for this case, we will use the installation method offered for almost any Linux distribution. To do this, simply open a terminal and in it we are going to type the following:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/89luca89/distrobox/main/install | sudo sh
And ready with that we can start using this tool.
Regarding its use, distrobox is divided into 8 commands:
- distrobox-create- creates the container
- distrobox-enter – to enter the container
- distrobox-list- to list containers created with distrobox
- distrobox-rm- to remove a container created with distrobox
- distrobox-stop- to stop a running container created with distrobox
- distrobox-init – the container entry point (not intended to be used manually)
- distrobox-export- is designed to be used inside the container, useful for exporting applications and services from the container to the host
- distrobox-host-exec- to execute commands/programs from the host, while inside the container
Finally If you are interested in learning more about Distrobox, you should know that the code of the project is written in Shell and is distributed under the GPLv3 license. You can consult both its source code, as well as its user manuals and more information in the next link.