distrobox

Use any linux distribution inside your terminal. Enable both backward and forward compatibility with software and freedom to use whatever distribution you’re more comfortable with. Mirror available at: https://gitlab.com/89luca89/distrobox (by 89luca89)

Distrobox Alternatives

Similar projects and alternatives to distrobox

  1. manjarno

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  3. flatpak

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  4. WSL

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NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a better distrobox alternative or higher similarity.

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distrobox reviews and mentions

Posts with mentions or reviews of distrobox. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-05-19.
  • The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source
    23 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 May 2025
    You use distrobox (https://distrobox.it/) and move on with your life. At work I use multiple versions of Ubuntu seamlessly without messing with VMs on a host fedora box without issue. That includes building things like .deb packages.
  • Show HN: Box – a script-based interactive container manager
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Jan 2025
  • We're Leaving Kubernetes
    15 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Nov 2024
    I strongly recommend just switching the Dev environment over to Linux and taking advantage of tools like "distrobox" and "toolbx".

    https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

    https://containertoolbx.org/

    It is sorta like Vagrant, but instead of using virtualbox virtual machines you use podman containers. This way you get to use OCI images for your "dev environment" that integrates directly into your desktop.

    https://podman.io/

    There is some challenges related to usermode networking for non-root-managed controllers and desktop integration has some additional complications. But besides that it has almost no overhead and you can have unfettered access to things like GPUs.

    Also it is usually pretty easy to convert your normal docker or kubernetes containers over to something you can run on your desktop.

    Also it is possible to use things like Kubernetes pods definitions to deploy sets of containers with podman and manage it with systemd and such things. So you can have "clouds of containers" that your dev container needs access to locally.

    If there is a corporate need for window-specific applications then running Windows VMs or doing remote applications over RDP is a possible work around.

    If everything you are targeting as a deployment is going to be Linux anything then it doesn't make a lot of sense to jump through a bunch of hoops and cause a bunch of headaches just to avoid having it as workstation OS.

  • Top 5 Must-Have Tools for Linux Users
    2 projects | dev.to | 2 Jul 2024
    You can check it out at: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox
  • Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 May 2024
    That seems more like Distrobox to me(?) https://distrobox.it/
  • Windows 11 now comes with its own adware
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Apr 2024
    Regarding the stability issue on a dev machine - you may be interested in playing with one of the immutable-os distros, such as SilverBlue (fedora based).

    The high-level take-away is you can't break your actual OS since it's root filesystem is read-only, and you use "pet" containers (on docker, podman, whatever) to do your work in. Applications are either sandboxed via Flatpak, or installed/run inside your pet containers. If your pet container dies, you cry about it for a moment, and when you're ready you get a new one - your actual os and other containers remain unaffected.

    I use distrobox[1] to create/run the pet containers.

    [1] https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

  • Tools for Linux Distro Hoppers
    7 projects | dev.to | 27 Mar 2024
    Distrobox is a tool that enables us to try Linux distro CLI, including their package manager. This requires a containerization tool (e.g., Docker). In Windows, this can be achieved using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)
  • Distrobox: Use any Linux distribution inside your terminal
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Feb 2024
  • Fedora Atomic Desktops
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Feb 2024
    I use containerized versions of things, ubuntu and chainguard images mostly.

    You can always create containers with init if that's how you want to do that though. Some distros publish images that come that way: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_...

  • Raspberry Pi is manufacturing 70K Raspberry Pi 5s per week
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Jan 2024
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505448 ... https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_...
  • A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
    www.saashub.com | 24 May 2025
    SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives Learn more →

Stats

Basic distrobox repo stats
408
10,882
8.8
24 days ago

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