apx VS junest

With the advent of containerised software like Flatpak (or apx if you're adventurous) and Distrobox, running a solid LTS release like Mint has fewer drawbacks than ever.

Download the latest build from our GitHub repository: https://github.com/Vanilla-OS/apx/releases/tag/continuous.

All Flatpaks can be installed as a user. For any other apps, you can compile & install apx, which lets you run many distros in full performance, host integrated containers in your home directory

Honestly, I would try asking on their github .. seems like it should be possible to run it on Silverblue and based on the description from the main project page (emphasis mine), I would think it should be ok

There is an issue with lxc as stated here: https://github.com/lxc/lxc/issues/4283 and https://github.com/Vanilla-OS/apx/issues/118

You could try using APX or abroot to install XFCE or Cinnamon; check the APX docs: https://documentation.vanillaos.org/docs/apx/

Maybe this will help https://documentation.vanillaos.org/docs/apx/

Explore the Junest Git project and follow the installation instructions. Activate the environment with junest setup and enable the running-from-host options.

PS: about JuNest (see https://github.com/fsquillace/junest ) this is a lightweight Arch Linux based distro that runs, without root privileges, on top of any other Linux distro. I also suggest to take a look at it.

About JuNest, all the apps installed using it whave always worked well for me. I've also wrote a script and done a pull request (rejected) for a tool that exports the apps to the launcher (as distrobox-export already do) https://github.com/fsquillace/junest/pull/322

JuNest https://github.com/fsquillace/junest looks very complete and good, though I dislike the approach of having to download or build an image. It would be nice to be able to do stuff like clone my filesystem (already ZFS) and branch an environment off that instantly.

I have already done a PR (see here)to the main repository https://github.com/fsquillace/junest but I still get errors in merging this utility during the automatic github-action's test/check. Any idea?

- I have pacman installed through junest. It works for command line programs, did not test for gui software

Have you tried installing JuNest? It will allow you to download, install, and use Arch's precompiled binaries directly (in addition to making it easy to compile, install, and use AUR packages).

As for the rest, I've been testing stuff with distrobox, junest (which is like distrobox, but for arch guest and without the container), and Conty (a lot like Junest but as a single hyper-compressed executable file). Anything requiring an escalation or wanting actual access to root remains an issue, but for the most part, it works well enough.