storage VS toolbox

Check here: https://github.com/containers/storage/blob/main/docs/containers-storage.conf.5.md

One example that keeps popping up over the years is containers and ZFS or more specifically Linux kernel namespaces and ZFS. First LXD in 2016, podman in 2020 and 2021. There is docker issues in the past as well with the ZFS storage driver or overlayfs. These issues are fixed rather quickly by ZFS (because they are very good at what they do) or by upstream, but bugs keep happening. It is something I do not want to deal with. As I expect future problems with ZFS and projects that depend on specific features of the linux kernel, I prefer using something else. In this case Stratis, LVM and XFS, or LVM and ext4.

I tried using NFS because I know it well, and it is easy to do using ZFS. This Red Hat blog post says NFS should work and it does not work at the same time. I decided to just try. The ZFS server has no idea about the subuids on the podman host, so I had to mess around with --uidmap and --gidmap. That worked, as long as I did not use a pod. To keep things neat and simple, I tried to put all my Nextcloud containers into one pod. However, the id-mapping features cannot map multiple container IDs to the same host IDs. So, I cannot map the www-data (70) user and the postgres (82) user to localadmin (1000) on the podman host. Next, I tried directly mounting the NFS share as a volume using the '--opt type=nfs4' option when creating the volumes. Right away, I learned that rootless containers can't mount network shares. Makes a certain kind of sense and is also documented in the man page. But I first tried using root containers, to prove out the concept. The volumes mounted without complaint, but I landed back at square one because the id-mapping is not applied anywhere now. Appears to me that, NFS is a complete dud for this kind of application.

Docker is properly attributed to, see https://github.com/containers/storage/blob/a4cc7aa79e050c976...

I think OP wanted to say that Podman hates Docker what is not I feel when I'm interacting with the community there. People who use Podman do it because of it's additional features that Docker does not have, like starting an Container from a rootfs or mounting the currect directory in a container using "." as path. It's a lot of small things that make Podman better.

The team has both made a ton of effort switching off their proprietary Skia based rendering tech and adopting standard Wayland, and has put forward huge effort to making running incredibly well integrated real Linux containers just work.

The headline is true. ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment. But it obfuscates the details. It's a damned by omission statement. It has some really good sauce to help you not notice often, but it's not at all a Linux desktop environment one can regularly use. You can do a lot of Linux desktop-y things but only through well crafted special unique wrapped processes that mostly but not fully help mock & emulate a regular Linux desktop. Even though it now runs Wayland, the apps you want to run will have atypical intermediates up the wazoo.

And no one else uses any of this tech. ChromiumOs has so much interesting container tech, does such an interesting job making containers think they have a regular Linux / FreeDesktop environment. It's far far far far deeper virtualization than for example https://github.com/containers/toolbox . But you know what? Google has made zero effort to get these pieces adopted elsewhere. It's open source but not intended for use outside Chromium/ChromeOS. I respect & think ChromeOS is a quite viable Linux, and it's so much closer to the metal & more interesting, amazing tech, but my gods Microsoft has gone 300x further to establish wsl2 as a sustainable community effort folks could use & target, in a way that ChromiumOS has done nothing about.

It's sad how Google has transformed from a company that appreciated & worked with ecosystems, that drove things collectively forward, into an individual player that does their own things & delivers from on high. ChromiumOS is such an incredible effort, but it's so internernally drive & focused, and it's hard to believe in such a wildcat effort, even though it's so so good. It keeps coming into better alignment with Linux Desktop actual, but via shims and emulations that no one else cares about or which seems marketed elsewhere. And that inward focus makes the whole effort both so exceptional & promising, but suspect. Such a different nearby but alternative & separately governed universe. ChromiumOS/ChromeOS do excellent at faking being a Linux desktop, and wonderfully have increasingly drawn more strength from that universe, but are still wholly their own very distinct very separate very controller other space. In many ways that's great, secure, good, and miraculously transparently done. But it's still hard to really trust, being such a weird alien impostor, faking so much for end user apps, and there's tension in believing ChromeOS will keep straddling the rift in pro-user manifestations forever.

I'm really, really happy with my current setup of Fedora immutable + toolbox [0]. This tool lets you create containers that are fully integrated with the system, so you have acces to the entire Fedora repos, can run graphical apps, etc. while still having everything inside a container in your home directory. That means no Flatpak required. Highly recommended.

[0] https://containertoolbx.org

Seems like toolbox is also in this space; https://github.com/containers/toolbox

With Silverblue the core repos are very similar to what you'd have on regular Fedora. With more of a philosophical shift about where you're supposed to install things from. The idea being that the base OS is immutable and you keep it fairly minimal - even though you are technically free to install any of Fedora packages to it. And then you install user applications through Flatpak and toolbx. Where these more user space focussed applications are installed to your home directory and are sandboxed away from actual access to your OS. With iOS/Android style application permissions like "Give app permission to access camera" and "Give app permission to modify files in home directory". Allowing you even further customise the sandboxing of applications. Do you really want that app to have access to your microphone?

I'd probably try running it on the host system first. If you want to use your nvidia gpu inside toolbox, you would indeed need to install the drivers in the container: https://github.com/containers/toolbox/issues/116

Use toolbox on CentOS or Ubuntu if you want a Fedora environment with more up to date tools: https://containertoolbx.org/