mprweb VS junest

Debian has the MPR https://mpr.makedeb.org/

https://mpr.makedeb.org/ this is the link.

I know the MPR is a thing, but I've always found it unwieldy to use.

So the main difference from something like MPR is that it does that same thing, but for more packages, not only .deb files?

Regarding system repositores, it's generally best to avoid tampering with system repositories like this because it'll cause problems with release upgrades down the line. But if you really want to, look into https://mpr.makedeb.org/ with the expectation that a release upgrade with these packages installed will most likely fail.

makedeb - Like makepkg, but produces installable *.deb files. There are already lots of packages in the MPR

Actually exists! https://mpr.makedeb.org/

Mist is powered by the MPR, an AUR-like repository that's also for Debian and Ubuntu based systems (of which I'm also the project lead for, as well as the makedeb project listed below). In short, it uses pretty much the same PKGBUILD format that you'd see on Arch Linux, but uses them to build .deb packages instead of Arch Linux packages.

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.