Hey there!
I’m exploring Bluefin and I’m liking so much so far, but I’m still trying to learn it’s way to do things.
First of all I want to thank the devs for the docs. One thing that I find lacking in many “immutable” distros is this. They have a lot of totally new and cool stuff replacing the classic way to do all sort of things, but they often don’t document it properly enough to enable the user to use them correctly and without guessing.
One of the many things I appreciate about this project is that in general I find the docs very well written, complete and straightforward.
So thank you so much!
I have a bit of confusion on one point though: unfortunately I have to use daily some graphical applications that are not available in flatpak.
Now, I know that toolbox and distrobox are preinstalled and that could easily be a solution for me, but I’m trying to embrace 100% the way the developers thought and recommend using the system, and I read more than once that using tool/distrobox is discouraged (sorry, I’m totally sure I read it somewhere else too but right now I can’t find it).
The thing that isn’t so obvious to me is how I’m supposed to install such applications though, if not using toolbox or distrobox.
I saw that there’s ujust install-resolve and it’s just great! Maybe there’s a script similar to this to install this kind of software?
I don’t know, I’m sorry if this is a stupid question but it’s really unclear to me.
Hah I have no idea what docs for an “immutable distro” would even look like, most of our docs are pointing to the things we ship, not anything special.
The resolve one is tricky because it’s not really well supported in Linux so it automates the installation of davincibox, which is basically just setting up a distrobox for you. You could go that route for whatever piece of software you want or just install and export it in a distrobox if you want to.
Best way to install graphical applications that are not available as flatpaks is through a distrobox.
Just create one for a distro you want (be it Arch,fedora,ubuntu etc) and install the app normally in there with the package manager. Then you can export it from the box to “your host” show that it shows up in gnomes app list
Well, most distros aren’t even doing that, so it’s really appreciated!
Okay, thanks guys, I’ll do it that way then. It seems the most obvious and intuitive way too, I think I got confused by reading something in the FAQs, like:
Bluefin doesn’t recommend using Toolbx - it instead focuses on devcontainers for declarative containerized development.
and
This is an opinionated developer workflow that differs from Fedora’s use of toolbox. Toolbox is included for people who prefer the upstream approach.
but maybe that’s related only to development, and not package management in general.
Bluefin doesn’t recommend using Toolbx - it instead focuses on devcontainers for declarative containerized development.
Would this primarily be for vscode’s rich built-in support and for the better separation from the host?
I’m presently operating under the belief that Podman is basically a daemonless Docker and Toolbx/Distrobox are basically specialized Podman scripts to expose a lot of host integration. And that the answer to OP’s original question (what to use when no Flatpak is available) is probably “any of the above, depending on how much isolation you want from your host?” EG, you probably don’t want an untrusted app running in a Distrobox but it might be OK in a Podman/Docker. Would one of you more experienced folks eyeball that postulation as a sanity check, please?
