The Distrobox 1.3 toolkit has been unveiled, enabling quick installation and launching of any Linux distribution in a container while ensuring its integration with the main system. The project code is written in Shell and is distributed under the GPLv3 license.
The project is implemented as an extension on top of the Docker or Podman tools, focusing on maximum simplification of work and configuration for integrating the launched environment with the rest of the system. To create an environment with a different distribution, simply execute one command: distrobox-create, without worrying about the details. After launching, Distrobox facilitates the forwarding of the user's home directory into the container and configures access to server X11 and Wayland for executing graphical applications from the container, allows the connection of external drives, adds sound output, and implements integration at the level of the SSH agent, D-Bus, and udev.
As a result, users can fully work in another distribution without leaving the main system. Distrobox claims support for 16 host distributions, including Alpine, Manjaro, Gentoo, EndlessOS, NixOS, Void, Arch, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, and Fedora. Any distribution for which OCI-formatted images exist can be launched in the container.
The main areas of application include experiments with atomically updatable distributions, such as Endless OS, Fedora Silverblue, OpenSUSE MicroOS, and SteamOS3, creating separate isolated environments (for example, for running a home configuration on a work laptop), and accessing newer versions of applications from experimental branches of distributions.
In the new release, the command distrobox-host-exec has been added for running commands from within the container executed in the host system environment. Support for the microdnf toolkit has been introduced. Support for containers running with root privileges (rootful) has been implemented. The support for distributions has been expanded (Fedora-Toolbox 36, openSUSE 15.4-beta, AlmaLinux 9, Gentoo, and ostree-based systems). Integration with the system environment has improved, such as synchronizing timezone settings, DNS, and /etc/hosts.
Source: opennet.ru
