I have created a snap for Distrobox which is a tool similar to Fedoras Toolbox. With this together with a working Docker or Podman installation, it is quiet easy to use the package manager of any distro in your terminal, even on Ubuntu Core. There are problems when using the Snap version of Docker though…
Installation:
sudo snap install --beta distrobox
You need to either install docker or podman on your system. While the snap version of docker is functional with Distrobox, it can’t access files in your HOME directory.
Description from upstream:
Use any Linux distribution inside your terminal. Enable both backward and forward compatibility with software and freedom to use whatever distribution you’re more comfortable with. Distrobox uses podman or docker to create containers using the Linux distribution of your choice. The created container will be tightly integrated with the host, allowing sharing of the HOME directory of the user, external storage, external USB devices and graphical apps (X11/Wayland), and audio.
Okay I have tried a lot to install podman or docker inside of the snap and access it but nothing worked so far :-/ Maybe with core22 it works if I install podman just as a stage-package.
So the only working solution I found yet is to make distrobox a classic snap. Then the user can install podman or docker from somewhere else. It works fine if using the docker snap in classic mode as well.
“3 years later” Time just skip 3 years (°w°)
Anyway, snap are already a “type” of container, run distrobox inside a restricted space like snap only make sense if the base system are immutable like fedora silverblue.
