Distrobox 1.7 toolkit has been released, allowing for the quick installation and launch of any Linux distribution in a container while ensuring its integration with the main system. The project's code is written in Shell and is distributed under the GPLv3 license.
The project provides an overlay on Docker, Podman, or Lilipod and is characterized by maximum simplification of the operation and integration of the launched environment with the rest of the system. To create an environment with a different distribution, simply execute the single command distrobox-create without worrying about the details. After launching, Distrobox ensures the home directory of the user is forwarded to the container, setting up 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.
Distrobox claims to support 25 distributions as the host system, including Alpine, Manjaro, Gentoo, EndlessOS, NixOS, Void, Arch, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, and Fedora. Any distribution for which there are OCI-format images can be run in the container. After installation, the user can fully work in another distribution without leaving the main system.
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 distrobox-export utility has added the option '--enter-flags' to specify additional distrobox flags passed when executing the distrobox-enter command. The distrobox-export utility also now includes the '--list-apps' and '--list-binaries' options to output lists of exported applications and executable files.
The distrobox-create utility has added the options '--hostname' to set a host different from the environment name, and '--unshare-groups' to disable group sharing with the host environment.
Improved management of login shell.
Enhanced support for systemd in containers with the init system.
Improved performance on systems with NVIDIA graphics cards.
Enhanced support for containers with the Wolfi distribution.
Improved operation of graphical applications exported from containers running with root (rootful) permissions.
Enhanced support for the terminfo terminal database.
Changes have been made that break compatibility with applications and executable files exported from the container for invocation from the host environment. In case of issues, it is recommended to re-export applications and executable files from the container.
Source: linux.org.ru
