New to DistroBox? Start Here: Full Beginner's Tutorial!

every now and then a new tool comes along that makes me ask the question how did we go so long without something like this existing well in today's video I'm going to show you such an [Music] [Music] application hello again everyone and welcome back to learn Linux TV your home for Linux related fun and learning in today's video it's all about drro box Dro box is awesome I've had a chance to check it out recently and I figured I'd create this video to show you guys how to use it what I'll do in this video is give you the basics of drro box and I'll show you how it works in fact with drro box you could do some very strange things for example here I have an application that is running on my system and it doesn't look like anything unusual does it well what I'm running right here is Firefox but not just any Firefox I'm running the Fedora version of Firefox but my host distribution is popos so how exactly did I do that well the answer as you could probably guess is drro box drro box is crazy it's like a Swiss army knife of distributions and it lets you Cobble together some very weird things for example if you want to run Arch user repository packages on Debian you can absolutely do that and the applications will run just as well or almost just as well as they do on the actual distribution itself now it's not fool approved but Dr box does let you do some really cool things so I can't wait to show it off and here's another example here's my Arch Linux installation and I have Google Chrome open on my screen as you can see but what I'm running is the Debian version of Google Chrome whatever you want to do that's crazy strange or just unusual you could probably do it with drro box now one thing I want to mention real quick is that drro box doesn't technically let us do anything that we weren't able able to do before containers have existed for a very long time and we've been able to use them to run all kinds of applications that weren't meant for the host platform so that in and of itself isn't really new the difference is how dist box makes this very very easy in the past exposing a gooey application to your host system was not the most straightforward thing to do yes we've done it lots of us have done it and H lab people do this all the time but Dr box makes this very easy so easy in fact that it's kind of shocking so basically Dr box is a simple tool simpler than you might expect it gives you the ability to install things from multiple distributions on one single host system it does this by utilizing technology that we've had for quite some time and yes you guessed it containers this Dr box makes the process of running applications on various distributions so easy that it changes the mindset from do I have enough time to figure out how to do this to I have a few minutes to kill why not try it and see see what happens and that's part of the charm of dro box and one of the reasons why I love it so much it doesn't mandate how you use it it presents itself as a tool for you to use and you decide how you use it if you want to set up a crazy experiment well just go ahead if you have a few minutes to kill and you want to run a package from one Distribution on another dist box is a great way to do that but you might be wondering why you would want to do this in the first place well there's a lot of different reasons why you might need a solution like drro box but it's not for for everyone if you're a developer and especially if you're a developer that packages software for multiple distributions you're really going to love this because this is a great way to have an environment where you can build a package without having to reinstall your entire distribution if you want to try out a package before you install it on your host distribution you could use it for that or if you just want to see how a package differs in one distribution versus you know what's offered in another it's a good fit for that as well in fact although it's beyond the the scope of this video some people are using drro box to run desktop environments complete desktop environments so if you wanted to try out the latest version of plasma you could probably do that within dist box now again it's beyond the scope of this video but it is something that you can do and people are doing it so on this video what we're going to do is work through the process of using Dr box and you're going to see how easy it actually is to use it's not challenging at all in fact just a few commands and you have it installed but I'll show you how to install it I'll give give you some examples of how to use it it's going to be a ton of fun now with all of that out of the way is time to dive into drro box so let's do exactly that I'll have time codes in the description down below as I always do so you can get right to the section that most interests you so without any further hesitation let's check out drro box so let's get started what you're seeing on the screen right now is a PPA repository for Dro box this is only needed if you're running a version of Ubuntu that's a bit older than a more current release I'm running poos which is based on Ubuntu 20204 and on that drro well it's not available in the repository so I just wanted to mention this page right here in case you're also running on a similar system on most distributions you shouldn't need a repository but on this one I do so if you're running on Ubuntu 20204 or anything based on it or perhaps an older version of auntu than that you will need this repository so I'll go ahead and copy this right here and I'll have a link to this down in the description down below we'll just go up here to the terminal we'll paste it in press enter and now we have that repository installed we'll need podman installed in order for us to be able to use this particular application so what we could do is run sudu app install and then the package we'll install is podman podman is a requirement for drro box it needs a container ization solution you could also use Docker but podman is recommended because it's able to run rootless containers it's just better for security and we're done now that we have podman installed we can go ahead and install drro box itself thankfully that's really easy to do all we have to do is run sudu app install and then you guessed it drro box I'll press enter and it's a very small utility in fact it's already done that's all it took to install drro box it was super quick but now that we have Dr box installed how do we go about using it well let's run through the first of the dist box commands I'll be giving you right now but I'm going to do is run Dr box and then I'll give it the keyword create I'll press enter notice that it's going to be installing Fedora even though I didn't tell it to I'll tell you why that's the case here shortly but for now I'll press enter to accept the default of yes it's going to download the Fedora image and that Fedora image is what's going to power the container that I'm about to create and the process is complete what we've done even though we only typed dist box create we created a fedora container and it's available for use it even chose a name for us it's called My distro Box in fact it gives us the command to enter that particular container to get a command prompt from the container which we can do by typing drro box enter and then the name of the particular instance you've set up now before we do that there's an alternate command I want to give you if you recall I had you run drro box create another thing you could do is add the Nvidia option -- Nvidia and that's for those of you that have an Nvidia GPU and for some reason you'd like to expose that GPU to The Container I'll leave that up to you but I definitely wanted to make sure you had this command for your notes because you might need it anyway since the output tells us that we could run drro box enter and then my drro box let's just go ahead and do exactly that now what exactly happened well let's run the following command and see if we can investigate this a little bit let's check out the OS release file but wait a minute it's showing Fedora but I'm using papos if I run that same command on my host system here well you can see I'm running Papa so when I used the enter command with drro box I was able to enter the Fedora container and now all the commands that I enter in this terminal are going to be executed against a fedora system okay so there's a few things that we can glean from this situation so far drro box is very easy to install you only need the PPA if you have an older distribution but for most of you it should be available in your distributions package repositories so go ahead and install the dist box package and you should be good to go we also learned that we need a container engine in order for this to work we installed podman earlier in this video and that satisfied that request that's the recommended method so that's what you should install as well the main benefit with podman is that we have additional security now just because we have a solution like drro box and we're running inside of it or at least we will be that doesn't mean that the apps are going to be more secure of and by themselves but podman does have additional security for example it lets you run rootless containers that's a good benefit to have which is one of the reasons why it's recommended now a couple of other things that we've noticed is that if we don't tell the distal box command which distribution we want the container to be based on we're going to get a fedora container by default we also know that if we don't give it a name it's going to give it a name for us and that brings us to the first thing that I really love about Dro box it's super easy to use now another thing we could do is check out which Linux kernel the container is running which one do you think it is well I'll press enter and let's find out now if you already know Linux well enough you probably know that that was a trick question the kernel that we're going to be running inside the container is going to be the same as the host system so we're not running a fedora kernel here we're still running the kernel that came with my distribution but we are able to to run commands against a fidora system by using drro box in fact let's check out another example and this one's going to be a lot of fun what I'm going to do is run sudu dnf install and then Genie let's install the genie text editor but we're inside the container here so what's going to happen exactly well let's find out we'll install the package sorry to interrupt myself but I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy making this content for you guys I have a ton of fun if you enjoy the content that I produce then please consider supporting learn Linux TV the thing is producing content like this isn't cheap so by giving back to the channel you can help me make even more content for you guys and to find out more about how you can support learn Linux TV what you could do is go to support. learnlinux.tv and there you'll find some of the ways that you can help support the channel anyway let's get back to the video I'll type Y and press enter to confirm and now we have Genie installed here inside the Fedora container so let's run it I'll just type Genie just like that and I'll press enter wait a minute it's showing up here inside my desktop environment this is Genie it's actually Genie now it's not the Ubuntu version or the poos version in my case this is the Fedora version running here on poos 201204 and here we can see some information about the version so already I was able able to run Genie from within a container the Fedora container and I was able to run that to make it look like a native application here on my host system now let's take this a step further I'll just close out of everything here I'll exit out of the container and as you can see I'm back on poos now the next thing I'll show you is how to name your container so what I'll do is type Dr box and then create just like we did last time but I'm going to give it the- n option because I want to give it a custom name I want to name the container I don't want it named for me I want to give it a name of my own choosing if we don't ask for anything else we're going to get a fedora container by default I'll show you how to specify the distribution later but let's just give it a name and I'll call mine Fedora box so I'll press enter and let's see what happens and just like before I could run Dr box then enter and then the name of the container I called it Fedora box and I'll PR press enter so far so good so let's take a look at this and make sure we are running in the appropriate environment and we are I'll go ahead and exit and return back to my host system here and show you the next example at this point we have a couple of containers so how do we keep track of all these well the next example is going to show you exactly how to do that and just like everything else so far it's really easy all we have to do is run distro box and then list and that gives us a list of the containers that we have installed here on the system so well that's pretty easy to do now for the next example what I'm going to show you how to do is select a different distribution to act as the base for your container just like before what we'll do is run Dr box and then create we want to create a dist box essentially dasn because we want to give it a name and what I'll do is call this one Ubuntu box so you could probably guess that I'm going to be creating an Ubuntu container and to do that I'll give the disto box command the-- image option this allows us to select a different image and specifically what I'll do is select the abtu 20204 image so BTU at version 2204 just like that and let's see what happens so I don't have the auntu image here on my system so I'll let it download it I just pressed enter to accept the default of y for yes it's pulling it down right now and now just like before we can run Dr box enter and then the name of the box which is going to be in my case Ubuntu box that's the one that I just created so I'll press enter it's going to do the same thing it's going to start the container and then it's going to install some basic packages so now we are inside Ubuntu box and what I'm going to do is install Genie again I'm not not sure why I'm picking on Genie all the time but I'll just go along with it let's install Genie the auntu version this time I'll press enter and now that's done to make sure the application works let's launch it I'll open Genie and let's see what happens and there it is here we have Genie running just like last time but the difference is that this is the obuntu package that's running here on my system so it's pretty cool that we can install packages from different distributions in this case we installed two different versions of Genie now everything that you've seen so far isn't really all that exciting because everything that we've done we could do within Docker or some other container manager but the thing is I'm not done yet I'm going to show you something right now that's going to make this even more awesome now here inside the container and this is important we want to be inside the container we have a very special command at our our disposal we have the dro box export command type-- app and then I'll type Genie the name of the application that I want to export and what this command will do is let us export a package so that way it's available to the host operating system as an application that can be launched through the app launcher so let's run this and see what happens it says that it's been successfully exported and it tells me that this particular application will here in my app launcher in just a few seconds let's check right now and see if it's there now you'll notice I have two versions of Genie right here I already had Genie installed on my host system it's something that I install on all of my systems but I also have another shortcut that goes to Genie as well and I apologize for my theme it makes the text hard to see but you'll notice that the top one here shows that it's being run on Ubuntu box the one underneath that is actually a flat pack version of Genie but the point here is that it's super easy to export an application that's running inside a container and have that be exposed to your app launcher and there's our video I hope you enjoyed today's video and I also hope you enjoyed Dro box let me know in the comments down below what you're using it for I can't wait to see what you guys are putting together also be sure to subscribe to learn Linux TV for the latest in Linux I would really appreciate that and and also consider supporting learn Linux TV by becoming a patron or a channel member it's not required but it's always appreciated anyway thank you so much for checking out this video and I'll see you in the next [Music] video [Music]

Channel: Learn Linux TV

Views: 86,601

Keywords: Linux, gnu/linux, LearnLinuxTV, Learn Linux TV, LearnLinux.TV, Learn Linux, Linux Training, Linux Tutorials, DistroBox, DistroBox Tutorial, open source software, learn linux ubuntu for beginners, Linux Containers, Docker, Podman, learn linux tv docker, Containers, Linux Apps, Linux Desktop, Linux Tools, learn linux tv commands

Id: eiDt4O6UPRw

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2024