Talk:Distrobox

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I am hoping that with some prompting, begging, pleading that some of the people more familiar with Distrobox would take pity on new users and give the Distobox page a little flesh on its bones. I remember seeing Distrobox when I was looking for something else in TW and thought "cool, that might be fun to try out someday, wonder if I will ever have time, as I am not sure why I would ever _need_ to do so. Then I installed MicroOS desktop and now it is apparently the focus of my existence!

Certainly, the user community of Distrobox could change if MicroOS desk ever takes off, as MicroOS desktop is aimed at both developers who have to focus on work and not playing with (and subsequently fixing) their OS/desktop but also non-technical (meaning not Linux sysadmin, not Linux distro engineers, not even developers but people who are currently having trouble with getting a Windows PC to function properly or who are used to having only one way to do whatever it is that Apple decided was important for them. (I am being a bit facetious here). So, people who have no idea what Linux containers might become the largest group of Distrobox users. This might be a good page to communicate to this group how to get started, what NOT to do, and how to properly get containers of software to work with desktop components as well as how to best combine/isolate various service (e.g. should I put PostgreSQL and Nagios, and maybe Postfix, and QGIS all in the same container since Nagios is going to be talking to PostgreSQL both to monitor it, but also to use it to store messages, just like Nagios will be checking on Postfix and maybe using Postfix to let someone know that PostgreSQL is wedged. QGIS might be using PostGIS as a back-end for storage. How does a typical user--who in this case may be an expert on hydrology and needs to use GIS, but who isn't at all fascinated by SELinux or how Linux services communicate. In the past, you could do all of this with a few checks in the Software Manager or a line of Zypper. That isn't the case with MicroOS desktop and having some signposts for the users would be quite welcome, I am certain.

I was not able to locate whether MicroOS installs Distrobox using Podman or Docker--the issue being whether or not it was running as root.

  • If it was an option when installing and I forgot it, *mea culpa*. But, it probably is still worth a sentence or two.
  • A brief mention on how much, and how to control, sandboxing is used would be helpful. https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/issues/28
  • While it seems obvious, mentioning that once you install Distrobox and put Tumbleweed in it, the next step is that you use zypper to add new software will be very useful to people who are not yet experts on using it.
  • Because of MicroOS desktop, many users who _maybe_ have heard of Docker, but who have never used it, will need some direction. E.g. how to find/install/configure/run the ready-to-go Docker image of default services that are often part and parcel of a Tumbleweed or Leap installation. The notion that MicroOS desktop has is that people will be coming to it from MacOS (and we are not talking about the subset of MacOS who have even heard of BSD, rather those who would be shocked to discover their BASH shell) and Windows.
    • MicroOS seems like a great fit for organizations like schools and small companies where there may be a champion who uses Linux at home, but it isn't what they are trained to do.
  • MicroOS requires users, presumably many of whom have little or no prior experience using Linux, let alone containers, to use Podman or Docker to install critical software components into Distrobox. It would be incredibly helpful to link to a "how to" create your own w/ packages from openSUSE repos or "how to" use one from Dockerhub (https://hub.docker.com/). If links are included to other relevant documentation I am sure this will be the way that an entirely new community of use learns how to use Linux Containers.

There are instructions for installing repos for Distrobox for Leap 15.4, 15.3, TW. (https://software.opensuse.org/download/package?package=distrobox&project=home%3Adfaggioli%3Amicroos-desktop) It is part of the default repo for Leap 15.5? If so, might be worth just mentioning. Also, speaking of repos, I am sure that there is a lot of collected advice and wisdom about which repos might have useful software, and which might have software that could be problematic. If there are caveats to which repos are potentially useful to add, which are pointless to add, and which are problematic to add, I am sure users would appreciate the advice.

I have found the following quite helpful and it might be worth including on the page as references, at least until detailed documentation can be put together:

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/tree/main/docs

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_tips.md

https://manpages.opensuse.org/Tumbleweed/distrobox/index.html or https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/usage.md (very helpful since the default TW distrobox installed doesn't include man and the MicroOS desktop doesn't provide man pages).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Distrobox

I think the proposed work-around for the lack of man pages (https://github.com/thkukuk/rpm2docserv) sounds great, esp. if it can show up in KDE's documentation (where man and info pages already are searchable) along with the documentation from LibreOffice, ParView (https://docs.paraview.org/en/latest/), maybe as a generic front end to Read The Docs...not your project, but s

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